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The American Kew8 Company, Agents. 



SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW. 

On toe FIFTEENTH FEBR CARY will be issued toe first miiaber 01 

HANEY'S JOURNAL OF ROMANCE, 

A SERIES OF ORIGINAL AND INTENSELY INTERESTING STORIES BY TALENTED 

WRITERS. 



The initial issue of this new enterprise will be entitled 

CARMIE, THE CREOLE SPY, 

Carmie is a story of surpassing interest, and for originality of conception insen 
uity of plot, truthful delineation of the many and diverse characters introduced it 
will rank among the best productions of the present day. The scenes of the tale are 
laid in Kentucky at the time that Stato was under the dominion of the lawless miu 
ions of the great Rebellion, and advantago has been taken by the author "of the 
stirring scenes of tnose days of terror to weave a story thoroughly fascinating to 
f7n,Ti 0V f f n ari ? g adveuture - The various specimens of humanity for which 

Old .Kentuck" is famous, aro presented to tho reader with a fidelity to nature 
which gives them all the reality of life. The manifold adventures which bafall the 
various personages are told in a glowing and yet not exaggerated style The nlotq 
of traitors, and the counter-plots of the Unionists, and the attempts of 'each nartv 
to evade the traps of tho other, keep alive the keenest interest. The fierce en 
counters with beasts and men will gratify every lover of fearless daring and he 
roic endurance. But far surpassing tho interest felt in all minor subjects will be 
tho glowing admiration, and almost personal interest the reader will irresistih'v 
teel in the heroine of the story, the beautiful Carmie, tho fearless and ingenious 
Spy, the glorious self-saorificing, undaunted champion of truth and right No one 
can read the thrilling, novel and dangeroris adventures of Carmie, the Creole Snv 
without being thoroughly fascinated therewith. ^ ' 

REMEMBER I Carmie, the Creole Spy, will be issued in attractive form will be 
gotten up in the best stylo of typography, and will be illustrated with numerous 
fine engravings, drawn expressly for the work by Frank Beard. It will contain 
an amount of matter (by actual measurement) equal t othe ordinary 25 cent novels 
attactive m style, and will be emphatically one of the best as well a s the cheaD 
est literary treat that can be procured. ^"<**f 

4S-No expense will be spared in makiug HANEY'S JOURNAL OF ROMANCE one 
of the most attractive and entertaining publications to bo had at any price We 
shall furnish it at a price which will placo it within tho reach of every one trust- 
ing that its intrinsic merits will gain for it a circulation amply remunerative in 
the aggregate, though the profit on each copy is insignificant. 

CARMIE, THE CREOLE SPY. 

will be ready on tho 15th February. It will be for sale by all newsdealera 
throughout the United States and British Provinces. If there is a New»ureut 
within reasonable distance, we prefer you should get the work of him 

jgg- The trade will please forward thoir orders as early as conveniei ill 
jobbers will supply it promptly. 

Retail Price Only Ten Cents. 

The AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, General Agents, New York. 



THE 

/SO 



NIGHT SIDE 



OF 



NEW YORK. 

A PICTURE OF THE GREAT METROPOLIS 
AFTER NIGHTFALL. 

By Members of the New York Press. 

Illustrations bg ^ranli $carb. 



C NEW YORK : 
J. C. HANEY & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

No. 109 NASSAU STREET. 

18GG. 

\ 

v 



Fix? 



List of Illustrations. 



PAGE. 

I. The River Tiijeves BoARorxo a Vessel. Frontispiece. 

II. The Fashionable Club House 25 

III. Scene ix a New York Pawnbroker's * 49 

IV. Faro Scene in a Fasihonahle Gaming Saloon 73 

V. Tub Sportino Fraternity - . Scene at "Harry Hill's" .... 97 



Entered according to Act of Congress ia tho year 1S60, by 
J. C. HANEY & CO., 

in tho Cierk'a O0T.cc of tho District Court of the Unitod States for tho Southern 
District of New York. 



/}y A New , Revised aad Enlarges Edition of Rogce3 avd Rogueries has jast 
been issuod, containing, in addition to its former exposures, all tho new and re- 
cent Swindles and Ilumbugs. The Prico of tho Eook remains tho same, and no 
on^ who wishes an entertaining and amusing volume, or wishes to bo thoroughly 
p^ted in regard to all forms of rascality and imnosturo, should fail to secure a 
copy. Sold by all dealers, or sont, post-paid, oa receipt of l* enty-flvo cents. 



6 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

of the daily papers with glowing accounts of marvellous banquets 
to titled or celebrated foreign politicians visiting our shores ? Then 
there is the Century Club, what high old times for dignified gentle- 
men, they kick up there, on ' ; Twelfth Night/"' perhaps- how they 
don old clothes and grey wigs, put a harp in some aged fellow's 
hand and play at Shakespeare times ! how thy public read of all 
these queer doings and wonder what their clubs are made of. That 
some of these clubs are very social and draw into their vortex the 
best men of the city, is not to be disputed— and that many of them 
are as notorious for gambling as the haunts of the statues adorning 
the corners of Prince street and Broadway, is equally true. But 
that most of them are the refuge of henpecked husbands, the breed- 
ers of domestic dissention, a conclave of male gossips — who will 
deny ? Be this as it may, we are writing of clubs, not intending to 
moralize over them — we take the following extract from an interest- 
ing paper, written some years ago, on New York Clubs and Club- 
men: 

" In America, until within a few years back, clubs were almost 
unknown ; and even now, in our most wealthy city, New York, they 
hold but a very subordinate place in the social structure, compared 
with the club3 of London. 

" Of the New York clubs, the Union, established in 1822, is alike 
the oldest and the wealthiest. Its grounds and buildings cost over 
$200,000. It has about five hundred members. One hundred dol- 
lars is charged as entrance-fee, and the annual subscription amounts 
to fifty dollars. Its president is Hon. John A. King, late Governor 
of the State of New York. It counts among its membership many 
men of note in arts, literature, politics and commerce. Bancroft, 
the Astors, General Scott, F. B. Cutting, Charles O'Conor, and 
others, are members of the Union. 

" The Century Club is composed of authors, artists, and amateurs 
of letters and the fine arts. The entrance-fee is forty dollars, and 
the annual subscription twenty-four dollars. The number of mem- 
bers is limited to two hundred and fifty. Most of the best known 
American authors and artists are members of the Century : Bryant, 
Taylor, Kensett, Curtis, Bancroft, Butler, Church the painter, Bar- 
ley, Gulian C. Verplanck, the last named being at present its presi- 
dent. 

" It may be of interest to note some of the rules and restrictions 
regarding club amusements in the United States. In the Union 
Club all games of hazard are prohibited. It is, however, permitted 
to play whist for as high a stake as five dollars per game of ten 
points, or two and a half dollars per game of five points. Billiards 
may be played for a dinner of the value of one dollar per game of a 
hundred points. The introduction of dogs is peremptorily prohibit- 
ed. As might be supposed, smoking is allowed in all parts of the 
house except upon the first floor. No games are permitted to be 
played on Sunday. In most other respects the rules and regula- 
tions and management of the clubs of Mew York, Philadelphia and 
Boston are very similar to those of their prototypes, the clubs of 
London." 

Let us enter one of these famous New York club3— a fashionable 
club, in modern parlance— where the members arc all gentlemen, as 



A FASHIONABLE CLUB HOUSE. 7 

far as the tailor and a strict adherence to the rale3 of society go to 
manufacture that nondescript animal. The club house, in exterior, 
is very imposing, a large four story stone front, its locality is un- 
questionable, for it is on the Fitch avenue, that St. Germain of New 
York ; we mount a flight of stone steps, ring the bsll, which is imme- 
diately answered by a very respectable individual wi'h carefully 
shaved whiskers, black suit, swallow tail cut, white cravat and slip- 
pers, his whole air is decidedly " Hinglish" and the very prototype 
of a London lacquey. There is no question as to our right of en- 
trance, so we leave this highly respectable door keeper to his easy 
chair in the square entrance hall, and enter the spacious parlor at 
the right. A gorgeous chandelier lends the light of a score of burn- 
ers upon the drawing room scene. The furniture is heavy and lux- 
urious, fresh from the hands of the most fashionable upholsterers. 
An elaborate centre-table stands beneath the chandelier, upon it are 
a dozen richly bound volumes of the best of poet authors. They 
look unsoiled and we know that they are seldom troubled. The 
walls are elegantly frescoed, for the mansion was, until very recent- 
ly, the residence of a fashionable family, whose taste in these mat- 
ters is unquestionable. That big bay window, in the day time, i3 
always patronised by a dozen youthful members, who sport eye- 
glasses and ogle female promenaders. A few chairs drawn towards 
it now mark the spot that these young bucks about town love to 
haunt in the full glow of an afternoon's sun. Passing from this 
room through a glass door ; we enter the billiard room ; the tables 
are all occupied and a dozen anxious waiters are watching jealously 
each count that lessens the score of each player. These patient 
waiters are not as numerous as one would expect, for none but fair 
players are bold enough to handle a cue here where each game is 
so severely criticised, and then the stakes are rather heavy. This 
apartment was once a carefully arranged conservatory, and before 
its being turned into a billiard room was a scene almost enchanting. 
Orange trees, fragrant and choice exotics intoxicated the senses with 
their perfume and beauty ; a fountain cooled the air and the music 
of its spray charmed whoever lingered over its marble basin. What 
romantic tales could its walls whisper, what warm words from lov- 
ing lips dropped in this consecrated spot, in the good times not very 
long past? Bab! the monotonous green of these long tables, the 
continual clanking of the clashing balls, dispel all the romance of 
this once hallowed, pretty chamber. Mounting the broad stair- 
case, startled a little by the shadowy form of knightly armor hold- 
ing solitary sentinel in the niches in the walls, we come into the 
card or smoking room of the floor above. We are now within the 
inner court — beyond that veil, if rent, would show up the fascina- 
tions of club-life. This room is the cosiest and most luxurious in 
the building. Warm colored walls, a cheerful fire, easy seats deep 
sinking and soft, lolling smokers and lazy loungers all congregate 
here. Here the sporting man, the moderate gambler, the inveterate 
old whist player, and all.lovers of play lounge far into the night. 
Let us sketch one group — it will be a sample picture for the most 
inquisitive of all outsiders. In this quartet is represented a wrin- 
kled old naval officer, a spruce looking young merchant, a short, fat, 
jolly doctor, and a sunburnt visitor from the sunny South. They 



8 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK., 

had well advanced in their game, as we entered, and the young 
merchant and the doctor showed plainly by their pleased looks that 
they had pushed their opponents sorely. It was a little interesting 
to note how indifferent the sallow Southern took his share of ill- 
luck in comparison with the angry scowl of the old sea dog ; to the 
latter came shortly the deal. The polite Virginian offered to deal 
for him, but the sour old lord of the quarter-deck seized the pack 
with a bungling grace that sent half the cards upon the floor. With 
a deep mouthed, salt water oath, he dashed the remnant after them, 
and tearing the cover from a fresh pack, proceeded slowly to deal 
them — the young merchant seeing the ill-humor with which his 
aged opponent took his luck, winked slyly at his partner and as- 
sumed an air of confidence, arguing further success. It was a high 
trump that he of the navy finished his deal with — but it lessened 
not his ill humor. We saw him pour down a wholesome horn that 
would have staggered a landsman. Squinting at his hand and then 
at his trump, he bid his neighbor " fire away." The old salt was evi- 
dently a veteran at the battle of whist, and with the very fair hand 
that had fallen to him he fired away. The luck turning, the young 
merchant looked perplexed, and the doctor, sipping his brandy, 
shook his head and brought all his science to bear upon the game. 
He, too, was no ordinary player. A trump card of the Southern 
was straddled by a higher, and the old commodore saw with dis- 
gust a trick that he counted upon carried off by his opponents. 
The eyes of the Virginian flashed with latent fire, wine had heated 
his brain and he attempted to cover his waning fortune by a 
higher wager. There was a pause. Idle members drew their 
seats nearer the party, and deserted all the other card tables. 
Words were loudly spoken, wine flowed freely, the propriety of 
increasing the wager at that state of the game looked hazardous ; 
it was settled, however, and the game went on. A careless revoke 
on the part of the doctor, which had a very " queer" look to an 
outsider, jarred the harmony once more, and caused the commodore 
to bleed his oaths very freely. Bets passed between the outsiders, 
orders for beverages increased, and as the tide in the naval officer's 
glass went down, the game seemed ^ all his way. The Southerner 
flashed his diamond ring and dealt his cards superbly, with an ease 
that showed an old hand at the "picturs." The doctor and the 
merchant in the end yielded the winnings, and as they were puffing 
away at a brace of solacing weeds in the reading room a few mo- 
ments later, we heard the latter rather hissingly compliment the old 
sea dog. This is but an every-night scene ; sometimes the excite- 
ment is even greater and the bets heavier. Add to all this the cir- 
culating gossip that a congregation like this are ever retailing, then 
you may conceive of the fascination of a club house. The doctor 
whose patients are in Madison Square and on Murray Hill, sees a 
good deal of life that is veiled to the rest of the world ; what a zest 
his anecdotes and gossip has ! The banker who holds your balances 
and knows your wealth to a penny, how he is button-holed by 
fathers having marriageable sons or daughters. Then the lawyer, 
so very reticent vou could trust him with a fearful secret you think, 
alas ! how the good wine loosens his tongue ! What strange things 
he whispers hero, that his society may gather a few choice spirits 



THE FASHIONABLE CONCERT SALOON. 9 

at his elbow ! From the card room we pass into the salle-a-manger. 
Here you will see ponderous members, hungry members, members 
who love to tickle the palate, who sit long over their wine, who 
have no thought l'or a wife and family at home dining off cold mut- 
ton, while they revel on the good things of this life. For such we 
trust these is a severe Caudle lecture awailing them this night a 
heavier reckoning than the little bill ot the steward, the amount of 
which would be bountiful indeed to their pale, pinched wives, stu- 
dying the hard code of an economical household. Here you can 
feed according to the extent of your parse, and if that be limited, 
stretch it a little by going into the steward's account until a month's 
end brings you and him to a settlement. The settlements are not 
all as prompt as one would think in a congregation that represents 
so much of the wealth of our city. Sometimes this steward accom- 
modates the gentlemen, but at a ruinous rate of interest. He will 
even advance money to those who have played deep, or to whom a 
short loan would be a God-send. He is certainly the most popular 
officer of the whole club, and his berth is a sinecure that yields an 
income not to be sneezed at. The bill of faro you'll find changed 
each day, and is as various as the carte at Delmonico's or the Mai- 
son Doree. The reading room is well supplied with all the latest 
newspapers, foreign and domestic, quarterlies and monthlies. Here 
you can write a business letter undisturbed, or indite an amorous 
billet in placid quietness. Whatever can promote social enjoyment 
and an agreeable evening's entertainment not inconsistent with its 
rules, is the study of the officers of the club. How far they have 
succeeded is too apparent in this crowd of devotees* There are 
nights — very seldom in their occurrence though, and marked by a 
white stone - when the lady friends of the members are invited to 
pass a social hour here. Music is famished, and creams and ices 
passed around. But Mrs. Grundy see3 nothing there that she could 
even shake her umbrella at. But as the night is waning, we must 
depart. Carriages and hacks lumber the street 5 members— some 
in husky and very inarticulate voices — arc hailing their several 
drivers ; some are going home to sleep off their deep potations, and 
a few, whose appetites for play have not been the least appalled by 
the moderate rules of the house, are going to where they can play 
yet deeper, and revel in a passion that has been fanned into a flame 
by losses or gains in their own club. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FASHIONABLE CONCERT SALOON. 

It has long been a byeword that our metropolis is the easiest 
and worse-governed city of the world. One would judge so, as in 
his walks about by night he sees so many flaunting vices, multiply- 
ing and brazen-faced, from the very laxity of our police system. 
Rowdy-haunted gin palaces on every corner, gambling saloons your 
next door nuisances, who can say how Ions his own favored home- 



10 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

stead is to be spared ? Are they not getting bolder and bolder each 
day, these depraved panderers to a vicious taste ? Even the sacred 
shadows of church towers are no bars to the impudent designs of 
their projectors. With a slow tide of vice surging quietly on, how 
soon will it be ere its polluted stream finds a channel in each of the 
fairest portions of our city ? It was a very bold step, that flaunting 
a gorgeous " concert saloon" in the very heart of the fashionable 
world — nay, its very walls run beneath the hearthstones of the aris- 
tocracy, sending the gleam of its flaring lights in golden bars on the 
very doorsteps of Fifth avenue. Under the nose of Madison Square, 
in the locality of the big marble hotels, flourishes the gigantic 
" Louvre." Undermining the better part of a block, its spacious 
saloons stretch away to the right and left, saloon beyond saloon. 
Substantial columns, massive as the park gates, divide hall from 
hall. That room to the left is the billiard room ; this middle apart- 
ment the grand drinking hall, with its great bar ; and under the 
alcoves there at the end, on the right, are more retired tippling 
places. The walls are frescoed and painted with the rarest ot artis- 
tic skill. Broad bands of gold, great pannels of deep emerald, 
baskets of luscious fruit, purple grapes in heavy clusters, golden 
apples, and sunny flowers all but fragrant. In the centre of the 
middle hall a statue fountain shoots its cooling spray, and the my- 
riads of lights, gleaming on it, turn its shower into a cascade of 
sparkles. Gold and silver fish sport at its base, and green mosses 
encircle its big white basin. The great bar is very rich with varied 
colored cut glass and silver ware, and numerous mirrors reflecting 
the bright lights, the gay walls, and the motley crowd hanging in 
every conspicuous corner. In the billiard room you'll find plenty 
of the youths of the " best society" chalking their cues and pocket- 
ing the " reds" ; in the main hall a scene of tempered carousal ; in 
the alcoves quiet Germans sipping lager and winking at the pretty 
waitresses. Let U3 take one of these alcoved tables where these 
lamb-like, long-whiskered Teutons are enjoying their beer, and sur- 
vey this tippling congregation. There are about two hundred 
thirsty and loving bacchanalians enjoying themselves, or pretending 
to do so, beneath the charms and smiles of some thirty " pretty 
waitresses." Pretty is the term set down on the " bills" — its appli- 
cation literally is a " whopper," for the better part of these Hebes 
and female Ganymedes are very coarse, fat and prodigiously ugly. 
The youth who would style them all beautiful, or feel the palpita- 
tions of his heart getting very audible by the fascinations of their 
presence, is made of different stuff from ordinary mortals, or is very 
deep in his cups. Yet there are a few— you could count them with 
your fingers — who are not ordinary, and in the every-day crowd of 
Broadway would be styled attractive. One of these is presiding 
over the destinies of a bottle of" Widow Cliquot," and clinking her 
small iced goblet with the flowing cups of a party of well-dressed 
young, evidently very English, cockneys, to whom the " concert 
saloon-' is of the old country style, and a familiar institution. The 
champagne is resting in an ice bucket at the side of the table, and 
one bottle follows another closely. They are very red-faced from 
the^ deepness of their rosy potations, their complexion weather- 
stained from a recent Atlantic cruise ; pendant whiskers, sandy as 



BEAUTY AND CHAMPAGNE. 11 

the soil of Jersey, cut in the Lord Dundreary style, adorn them all. 
They talk very loud, are very earnest in their admirations of the 
presiding beauty, and now and then let fly a squib at the wide dif- 
ference between Yankeedom and the land of their royal Queen. 
Hebe gets a little indignant at this, and with the slightest pout to 
her lips, and the least bit of indignation in her eyes, retorts rather 
sarcastically. The other females who occasionally press past the 
group cast verv envious eyes at her, for they know before the meet- 
ing breaks up Hebe will rejoice in a better- lined purse, and some day 
in the future sport another diamond ring on her well-loaded hand. 
Shall we sketch this fair and frail sister ? Clad in a dark dress, 
sitting very elegantly on her well-defined bust and falling in grace- 
ful folds, its sombre material sets off well the dazzling whiteness of 
her round throat and snowy hands ; her chin is dimpled, her lips 
very red, and wear a luscious and habitual pout, her nose is thin 
and straight, her large eyes dark hazel, with a long shadow of black 
lashes i her hair is raven, very heavy and glossy ; a golden band 
binds her forehead, and down her back falls clusters of pendent 
curls, and as she tosses her well-shaped hand, very conscious of her 
winning charms, there's a queenly grace that in hearts less steeled 
than the major portion of the youths about town, would work fear- 
ful havoc. The portly old figure at the bar, and his busy staff, look 
very much pleased as they cast a frequent glance at the table, for 
this Hebe is a great coiner to them of a golden vintage. 

" Kant yer drink some more of the wine, my dear ?" says the first 
cockney to her, as he peers with bloodshot eyes at her yet untasted 
glass. " Duced good wine, for this country ; not so good as at the 
Al'ambra, in Lun'on, tho' ; kant yer take a bit more, tho' ?" 

Hebe looks at the bottle in the bucket (it's nearly empty), then 
at the cormorants at the bar, who express an unmistakable " go 
ahead." Hebe saya she likes fresh wine ; she's afraid that in the 
bottle's flat. 

" Gwacious ! what a chawming queature," says another son of 
Britannia, and the soft youth calls for a fresh bottle of " Madame 
Cliquot." Hebe has a share in the profits of the wine, and the sly 
puss shows it in the merry twinkle she throws at the bar ; so she 
goes on bewitching and befoozling these English sports — dukes 
or bagmen — drinking very little and very cautiously, too, until 
far into the midnight ; and when they break up, a gold sovereign 
or two will glisten as it changes bands, and deeper and more sensa- 
tional scenes will close a nightly farce. 

We turn from this group to others less notable. They are the 
faces of those very familiar at the law courts, whose tongues at the 
bar are very eloquent in lashing the depraving vices of the day — 
great champions of public virtue ; faces also well known on 'Change, 
in the gold room, and in private banking offices ; faces of city offi- 
cers, aldermen and councilmen, who sit in grave state in the boards 
of our free schools, and talk so morally to delinquent teachers and 
infant scholars ; faces of newspaper men — men who indite such 
heavy articles on waning virtue ; faces of boys, nervous and daz- 
zled with their new-found excitement, beardless, and pale, trem- 
bling at the very excitement of the smilc3 of a coarse damsel deal-, 
ing them their cups of lager, and puffing; with her own lips their, 



12 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

fresh-ordered segars ; faces of old men, dried and withered as the 
shrinking gourd, the deep furrows flushed, yet the eyelids not too 
stiff to give wicked winks at these attendant girls. Faces of portly 
Germans, whiskered and spectacled, drinking, meditating and 
smoking philosophically ; these faces generally peer at you from 
the quiet and screened alcoves, they hang long over their lager, 
they hide behind great veils of tobacco smoke, expressionless, ray- 
less, inanimate. Girls of their own country, natives of Munich and 
Berlin, administer to their quiet thirst, unrewarded by caresses or 
bounteous smiles. To the careful observer, these Rip Van Winkle;? 
partake of a solid enjoyment unknown to the restless portion of the 
house. Sleeping beauties, or automaton wax figures would not bo 
inappropriate servers for these lethargic customers. Demonstra- 
tions of a very warm nature arc not in vogue at the " Louvre" ; the 
amorous caresses of the lower saloons are seldom exercised here ; 
order reigns supreme, and the wild hilarity of their carousals is 
strictly prohibited. Yet in what other respects differs this first-class 
place from its bolder neighbors ? Arc its waitresses more virtuous, 
its patrons more Godly ? There is not a very wide line between 
them. Some one of these bankers may be a Jenkins. You'll know 
some day what a wild gambler or dexterous burglar is nursing in 
this fold of beardless, maudlin youths. Those girls may be pretty 
now ; they are young yet ; but the beauty will fade, their gentle 
manners, blunted by vicious association, grow into the coarse ways 
of the painted bawd. If one should die to-night, shot by a jealous 
rival in this banquet hall, a train of mourners would fol'ow to her 
grave— a little time hence ?„ Good God ! the pine box, the careless 
undertaker ! And in the cold, damp morning the blue bloused 
grave-digger will shake the ashes from his pipe on her coffin, and 
stamp with heavy boots the red clay of her last bed ! They tell 
you that a cruel stepmother— the penury of an orphan home — drove 
them to this employment. "Well, believe a few who, with an honest 
tear, in falling voice, tell us so. But cold, searching reason reads 
deep. Love of dress, inherent indolence, and envy of the wild pro- 
digality of the fashionable world of to-day, swell the ranks of the 
pretty waitresses. 



CHAPTER IH. 



SATURDAY NIGHT AT A PAWNBROKER S. 

^ The sun gilds no brighter golden globes than the three brass cher- 
ries of Barney Meyers. For years they have hung from those iron 
branches, and it's a long while ago since they sprung from the bricks 
of Barney's four-story Loan-office. Before Barnes's time, another 
Meyers of the household of Judah sprouted them, and gilded and 
re-gilded them just as the present Barney does, and future Barneys 
will do, until the Jews are all gathered into one fold, and the pawn- 
broker's knocked into Jericho. Barney's mansion i3 planted in one 



SATURDAY NIGHT AT A PAWNBROKER'S. 13 

of those streets running out of Broadway, in which, in the mem- 
ory of citizens scarcely counting grey hairs, once lived the best 
people of our town. Marble steps and carved doorways are the 
lingering traces of their sumptuous homes. Bar-rooms, billiard sa- 
loons, ware-rooms and foreign boarding-houses now claim a foot- 
hold there. It does not matter in which of these by-ways Barney's 
brass cherries glitter in the sun ; suffice to say that Meyers is no 
myth, but life and blood, abater of pork, an observer of the Sev- 
enth Bay, and a devotee to almost an infatuation of the little god- 
dess of modern parlance — Soap. 

It's now past six o'clock, Saturday, August, 18—. The red sun 
has gone down, and the Sabbath of Barney Meyers has ended. Out 
of the door pops Barney to unhinge the shutters and shove them 
into an open cellar under the window. These obstacles to a full 
view of Meyers' front door and window are quickly skinned off. 
In the yellow twilight we behold the effect. The window to the 
right is boxed off, and a strong iron grating protects the glass— to 
the depth of a foot or so. Thi3 receptacle is well stored with an 
endless variety of secondhand personal effects. Some are jewels, 
some are musical instruments, some are deadly weapons ; some are 
old and quaint, some new and very brassy. They are unredeemed 
pledges - pledges that have outrun their time— pledges that never 
will be redeemed. Their owners having drunk themselves dead, 
thrown themselves into the river, expatriated for crimes or grown 
rich, are too respectable and proud to be seen entering the portals 
of a pawn-broker's shop again. Above this window, and in the 
door to the left, the glass is all whitened and untransparent— the 
secrets of the shop being of too delicate a nature for outside specu- 
lation and spectation. On these opaque panes, Barney has again 
produced his three cherries, but they are very black, and not as 
tempting as the golden fruit outside. Here, also, in gigantic let- 
ters, that stare the street up and down — tempting signals to the eyes 
of anxious pawners— is terribly written that sign of the usurer's 
black art — " Money Lent." In the last gleams of the setting sun 
we hang Barney's portrait. He is young yet, scarcely thirty, me- 
dium-sized, not very broad-shouldered or strong-limbed — these 
young Jews seldom are. His feet are small, his hands very white 
and delicate j he uses them nimbly, for he is dexterity itself at cards, 
shuffling or sorting money and swinging a quill. On the fourth fin- 
ger you'll see a big, massive, chased ring, the chasing well worn—^ 
scarcely discernible, for progenitors, that reach back to Jerusalem, 
have banded it down ; his neck is short, his head round, and en- 
cased in a scalp of black shiny ringlets, glossy as the beard of a 
freshly anointed ; his forehead is low— very low — a physiognomist 
would shrug his shoulders at such a little bit of fleshy parchment ; 
his eyes are blacker than even his ringlets, the balls protruding, the 
pupils large and dilated, set in a rim cf long lashes growing in an 
oval of red : his nose is what Be Cordova would style the steeple 
of a Jewish synagogue— running out from his forehead very thin, 
and fattening thick as it curves at its base. His lip3 are thick and 
red— you'd call them voluptuous in the picture of a woman — a nar- 
row moustache, like the teeth of a black horn comb, enhances the 
fullness of his mouth. His skin is olive —darker than his hands ; 



14 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

he is always fearftilly pale, and when excited, colorless as a piece 
of parchment. His is the face of a Jew — an unmistakable type of 
the sons of Abraham. His manner is very winning, and he has a 
score of friends. He is always full of business, and stands at the 
head of his profession. He has a joke for everybody, and deals out 
plenty of sympathy for the most unfortunate of his customers ; but 
he is avaricious and grinding, and the most piteous tale never won 
an easier bargain. Such is Barney Meyers, pawn-broker, and pro- 
proprietor of the famous establishment into which we now enter. 
The first floor of the building runs half the depth of the lot, then 
rises a few steps and then stretches to the rear. At the right is a 
short counter, divided into stalls having doors, and closely screen 
the customer transacting a loan or redeeming a pledge. The four 
walls, from the floor to the ceiling, and the stories above to the 
very roof, are netted with little square pigeon holes — receptacles of 
every variety of human apparel, personal property, professional 
instruments, and the devil knows what. There is the worn shawl of 
the poor apple-woman, the rich ball dress of a fascinating lady, the 
velvet doublet of the actor, the tools of a sick workman — his saw, 
his rule, his compass, the paints, the pallet, the brushes of the un- 
fortunate artist, and the pride of his heart— the unfinished pictures 
torn from the easel ; the blanket of some shivering sewing-girl, the 
faro-box and pistols of the ruined gambler. On the floor, under 
the counter, strewn everywhere, are pieces of bulky furniture, lea- 
ther bags, work-boxes, statues, vases, sewing-machines, rolls of car- 
pets, the canvas bundle of the sailor, the knapsack of the volunteer. 
The sacking of a city, the household of a Toodles, the outfit of a 
colony, present no rivalling scene to the contents of Barney's shop. 
Emptied on the sidewalk", dumped into the streets, in one monument 
to the memory of defrauded pledges, every class of society, every 
branch of science, every trade known to men would have contribu- 
ted a memento. It is Saturday night, we have said, and ics a busy 
time in the old pawn-shop. Workmen have been paid their weekly 
allowance, and have sent their thinly-clad, care-worn wives to re- 
deem numerous little household articles " spouted" to meet some 
pressing necessity, or pawned to eke the outlay of some devouring 
drunk. Others have come in, knowing that an empty larder is the 
most pitiable of all Sunday woes. Now and then leer out of the 
stalls deep, sunken, bruised, famishing eyes, hollow from the want 
of food, tearless, vacant and wandering — eyes of hungry wolves, 
tired of roaming a cheerless desert clamoring for a bit of money 
in exchange for the worthless scraping of their poor stock— eyes 
that are sick of the sight of moaning, debauched husbands wallow- 
ing in drink, making their homes kennels of satanic revels — eyes 
that are glazing slowly, surely, soon to be closed forever on the 
sickening scenes of the hard battle of life— eyes bedimmed with 
scorching tears - tears that are dropping a woful shower on the pale 
lips of emaciated infants sucking at famished breasts ; now and 
then the scene is relieved by the apparition of the features of some 
rouged courtezan, flaunting her brazen face, scarred with the scourge 
of a polluted life ; sometimes it's the modest face of struggling vir- 
tue, hooded and veiled, as if it were risking its chance of paradise ; 
again, it's the blush of an extravagant youth, come to the end of his 



pawnbroker's story. 15 

purse and his credit, entering the tainted exchange for the first time, 
and promising in his inmost heart that it shall be the last. Now 
there is a lull, and the young Jew boys, Barney's aids, can attend 
to all the demands of the counter. We draw Barney into conversa- 
tion ; we offer him a Havana, for the perfume of these musty and 
worn garments walling us around have the very stench of old 
shrouds. Barney, as an offset, brings out of a locker a bottle of old 
wine ; these Isrealites seldom drinii of the fiery draughts that are 
such potent agents in stimulating the prosperity of these very insti- 
tutions. The wine is olu and very choice; it's rather unpalatable 
to us from the thought, " from what sick-bed came this rare liquor, 
the charity, perhaps, of some rich lady to a penniless sufferer ?" 
But Barney has no such scruples, and he smacks his raw lip?; with 
the gusto of a connoisseur of wines. He's characteristically loqua- 
cious, and the good wine has oiled his tongue ; seated on a oig iron 
chest, the receptacle of all plate and jewelry, he tells us many in- 
teresting little romances of his mysterious profession — the pilgrim- 
age of a wedding-ring that had outrun its time of pawn ; how the 
initials and date, in this gold band, of two loving hearts, were 
erased, the ring sold and gone forever, he supposed ; how it came 
back again one night— it's identity was unmistakable ; how it lay 
in the old safe sis months or more, when, strange to say, it's first 
owner came to trace it, a fruitless search, ho supposed. " I never 
lets dem be sold now ; de price he'3 paid of dat will cover de loss 
of de monish on de others," he said, shaking his oily ringlets. Bar- 
ney can show family bibles, nay, with the very records of a house- 
hold—its deaths, its births, its marriages. One shudders at the fatal 
depths into which want or corrupted morals could have cast a mor- 
tal soul that pawned that sacred relic of a family history — that code 
of blood that, in pale ink, traced, perhaps, in the small letters of a 
mother'3 hand, told of the day it first saw the joyou3 light of God s 
earth - of the sorrowful hour that saw the last breathings of an an- 
guished sister's or brother's heart. Oh, the mysteries of life in this 
great city. Oh, the dark secrets of this weird, death-smelling 
house ! What endless romances haunts its mouldy walls ! Do you 
doubt the truth or the possibility of the following : 

" One gusty night, many years ago, when my uncle, old Abraham 
Meyers, kept this shop, there came in a very timid female, well ad- 
vanced in life, for old Abraham saw a silver curl shining beneath 
her well-muffled face. She wanted to raise a sum of money on as 
elegant a jeweled watch as ever the old man gave a ticket for. As 
the amount of money to be loaned was considerable, the old fellow 
questioned her closely to satisfy himself he was running no risk, in 
other words, "spouting'' on stolen property, she was simple at 
heart, and confidingly told him that her needs were to meet the ex- 
penses of an only daughter's marriage. She would have taken it to 
a jeweller, but as she treasured it, and earnestly hoped to redeem it 
at an early day, had come to him. He often had such dealings with 
people in the best of society, but these generally employed a confi- 
dential domestic : he surmised that she was too reduced to even em- 
ploy a servant 5 he accommodated her and she went out. Months 
rolled on, and still the jeweled watch was unredeemed. At the end 
of the year a young lady in deep mourning came in and entered 



1G NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YOKE. 

bat second stall. I had that day left school, had been placed by 
ny parent in this shop as an assistant to old Jacob 5 I had not yet 
learned one of the first regulations of our trade— never to be aston- 
ished, even at an angel coming in to pawn a golden harp. I essayed 
to wait upon her ; she wanted the old man 5 I eyed her intently ; it 
was a novel sight, such a neatiy-elressed lady, to one whose short ex- 
perience had only beheld an endless string of old hags. Ber be- 
reavement, I guessed was recent, for 1 saw her once lift her black 
veil and brush away a tear. Her face, I saw, was as beautiful as 
that print of Rebecca hanging over that brace of pistols yonder ; it 
burnt upon my vision ; I never saw, among all you Christians, one 
so charming. When the old man could wait upon her, judge ef his 
surprise when she unrolled the ticket for the jeweled watch. It was 
natural he should question her. " It was an aged lady, madam, who 
left this here mon hs ago," he said. l - My mother 5" it was all she 
answered ; the pathos ol lamentation was in those words. Be sur- 
mised ail ; the lady with the silver curl was dead — the old yellow 
ticket with the secret of that gusty night revealed. "When she went 
out, he reproved me sharply for staring so intently at a well-dressed 
customer ; I never was guilty of that offence after. Some of my 
customers never see the color of my eyes, yet I can pick them out 
of a throng. Time ilew on ; we thought no more of the beautiful 
lady's jeweled watch ; it was an almost e very-day transaction, the 
pawning of sueh rare jewels. Old Abraham, gone out of the busi- 
ness, had forgotten her, but the recollection of her beauty still 
haunted my vision. It is almost a proverb, and my daily transac- 
tions have verified it, that a " spout" seldom makes less than two 
journeys over the three globes. Three years ago, a young sport 
about town, one of those statues ihat still have their gallery on 
the corner of Prince street and Broadway — a familiar face to me 
and our counter, having run dry , sauntered into our shop. Bis eyes 
were bleared and bloodshot. I saw that drink, with that fuel, ihe 
love of gaming, was burning away his life rapidly. His long mous- 
tache and beard were matted with dust ; although young, his hair 
was whitening : he had grown old within a month. Taking from his 
side pocket a beautiful pearl-hilted dagger, he laid it on the counter ; 
valuable, though it was, it would not cover the amount he needed ; 
a gold chain was wreathed upon the dagger, and yet \ informed him 
that our margin was too narrow ; he then produced a jeweled locket, 
and with the point of his dagger extracted the miniature that it 
guarded. His fingers were trembling ; his nerves unstrung ; he 
made bungling work of it. Believe me, that miniature was the like- 
ness of that identical female who, years ago, had entered our shop. 
1 could study its features well from the slow work he made in dig- 
ging it out. This, then, was the husband ; to adorn his bride in 
wedding wreaths, the lady with the silver curl had pawned that jew- 
eled watch ; the circumstances were too uncontrollable. That night, 
this unfortunate wretch was wounded and robbed iu Prince street ; 
the jeweled watch came to me next morniDg ; a detective following 
close upon the heels of the pawner got the watch and the pawner 
too. 



THE CHEAP THEATRE. IT 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE CHEAP THEATRE. 
it 4.4.4 11 

There are several theatres in this big city, popular, and well at- 
tended by a certain class, which are beyond the pale of criticism. 
Their " stars" rise, shine and wane, innocent of the " puffs" of the 
daily press 5 the approaching steps of their triumphal march are not 
heralded by big letters, in all hues, illuminating vacant walls, strag- 
gling fences and rural rocks. The chief scenes of their great acts 
are never aired on gaudy canvas or in flaming woodcuts— making 
great picture galleries of our highways and by-ways. 

Do you remember when Professor Pepper's Ghost had the run of 
our Broadway theatres, how all the rocks and fences from the City 
Hall to Harlem were haunted with skeletons ? Just now we are re- 
galed with the u Scarlet Woman. Who comes next to have their 
carte de visite, six feet by four, hung all day and night in the street 
galleries to be decapitated by the street boys — Extract of Boo ! Hoo ! 
on the coat-tails - or to go home to the shanty of a rag-picker in the 
bottom of her old canvas sack ? Perhaps it's a pleasure to be de- 
prived of all this ; many thin-skinned people think so ; but we guess 
that the artists of the " cheap theatres" rather envy their brother 
" lions" of the higher class, when, in all their " walks abroad," they 
see their elephantine cards staring at them from every corner. De- 
prived of all this, however, they make a little " show ' under the 
shadow of the box-office ; the lithographer and the photographer 
multiply them in all costumes and postures, and they hang in the 
entrance halls of their several theatres, to the edification of a gaping 
crowd of the patrons of their genius, or admirers of their charms. 
Perhaps 444 Broadway is the most notable of these cheap theatres. 
It certainly is the best patronized. The big lantern before its en- 
trance flames as lustily as in its palmy days, when it shed its beams 
on the tide of pleasure seekers flocking to that shrine of cork and 
wool— the firstehome of the renowned Wood's Minstrels. After a 
glance at the-^piCtures of its troupe, the most attractive of which are 
those of the " ballet," we pitch down its steep entrance-way, almost 
stumbling over the door-keeper from its precipitancy. The hall that 
we now enter is well filled ; it is very capacious and well-ventilated, 
except the low gallery which half encircles the crescent-shaped 
building ; this is but a nest of sweating boxes, and their occupants 
have rather a hot stamping ground. Half of the ground floor is di- 
vided by a wire wicket, the other side of which is known to the at- 
tentive reader of the programme as the orchestra chair settlement 
—a sort of aristocratic part of the house ; boxes, gaudy with loud 
upholstery, flank the stage, and are generally empty, except of a 
Saturday matinee— they style them matinees, even here— when 
some woman of the semi-demi monde is bold enough to haunt them. 
The stage is capacious, and its drop up to style. The orchestra was 
well filled with a band of the most tenacious Dutchmen that ever 



18 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

scraped a fiddle -blank-eyed, whisker-faced, careworn, spectacled 
musicians— not a sensual mouth among them, yet with such a shak- 
ing of plump female limbs over their very eyelids ! They sawed, 
they blew, they pounded drums, uncomplaining and never weary, 
yet never smiling, and the whole house in convulsions. 

The audience was a conglomeration of all classes, for the whis- 
pers that have gone forth of the sly double jokes related at Butler's 
establishment have reached ears far and wide. The galleries, the 
admission to which is fifteen cents, were groaning with young boot- 
blacks, unfledged rowdies, shiftless loafers, and representatives of 
the mercantile community, who deal limitedly in pippins and ice- 
cream. The parquette, the twenty-five cent locality, enjoyed the 
society of young men about town, who pick up a precarious living, 
and have a great weakness for corner groceries, some old men with 
the odor of car stables, sailors, soldiers, and gentlemen employed 
in repairing our highways, were also conspicuous spectators ; the se- 
lect orchestral chairs — many of them a long way from the orchestra 
— were devoted to the comfort of numerous drygoods drummers 
and their country customer-?, members of the bar, proprietors of 
bars, youths who lunch at Berry's and drink black coffee at mid- 
night at Delmonieo's, individuals who patronize faro banks, gents 
who finger large quantities of money in other banks, clerks and 
blacklegs, Fulton market butchers and navy officers. 

The play-bill, which is as long as your arm — for they don't spare 
actor, time nor musician in this hospitable entertainment — announces 
fourteen different entertainments, many of which are encored and 
then encored again, spinning it to past twenty in number, and al- 
most five hours in time. Its variety is as notable as its length ; 
songs, dances and farces crowd one another to the end. Another 
feature, and which adds much to the success of the proprietor, is the 
restless activity of the performers ; nothing lags ; the singer rushes 
through his song, the darkey jumps at his jokes, and the legs of the 
ballet-girls are always twinkling ; and it may be said, with truth, 
that the heels of the scene-shifter never are cool, and the echoes of 
the prompter's bell never dies out. Liberty to smoke in any part of 
the house is another peculiarity of the cheap theatre. Segar ven- 
ders patrol the building, and l{ 'Ave a segar, sir ?" rings from par- 
quette to gallery ; the sententious leader of the band smokes, the 
violins and the bass-viol smokes, so would the horn and the flute if 
they could puff the weed through the keys of their instruments. 
The vile pipe of the mender of highways, the cigarette of the youth, 
the black cabbage-roll of the rough and the light Havana of the 
bank clerk, all mingle the perfumes of their smoke wreaths in one 
rank, misty cloud, that hangs aloft as an offering to the shrine of 
their favorite gods. We must confess there was something oriental 
in lolling in one's seat, puffing at ease, gazing through the smoke at 
the graceful limbs of large-eyed dancing girls. 

Prompt on time shot the curtain to the dust and cobwebs over the 
stage ; out from the side scenes pops a darkey clog-dancer ; as the 
music of his brass heels clattering on the boards rings through the 
hall, the eyes of the gallery are on him. There is a crowding to the 
front places, standing on seats, leaning on shoulders, gazing on 
their very knees, this portion of the audience show their unmistaka- 



THE CHEAP THEATRE. 10 

blo appreciation of the jig-dancer; their very eyes glisten at the 
sight of his silver belt, and there are no bounds to their admiration 
when the pipe-stem legs, in black velvet, contort themselves into 
some fantastic position, and amble around the stage in faultless 
time. This fellow had probably received his early dancing educa- 
tion in the bunk-room of a fire company. To dance a jig or a " step 
around" was a cardinal point in a faultlessly-nursed fire-boy. 

After this jig came the ballet, the attractive feature of the even- 
ing's entertainment — the heavy trump card of the cheap thsatrc. 
The scenic artist gave us a hot, blistering scene somewhere in the 
Torrid Zone, where burning bushes, volcanic eruptions and noon- 
day heat are the orthodox condition of things. Perhaps this was 
done more out of sympathy for the scantily-robed females who now 
crowded the stage in all the splendor of meretricious spangles ana* 
fleecy gauze. When the dancing of these nymphs commenced, it 
was too apparent why the front seats nearest the foot-lights had 
been so eagerly gobbled up by a party of vicious-looking youths, 
who had gone very early, and were considerably wrought up with 
anticipating anxiety. We never saw such a promiscuous, startling 
and very loose flinging about of flesh-colored tights. It would be 
a bold assertion to say that these females (their pictures are hung at 
the door,) were all pretty or well formed. But certainly, distance 
lending enchantment to tbe view — the blending of high colors and 
powder and rouge — false hair in its most fascinating weathings — all 
combined to make a very pretty picture ; then contrast their re- 
markably pure white and new dresses, their dazzling arms and 
snowy busts in the flood of light, with the rough crowd and foul, 
tobacco-reeldng hall, so dimly lighted, and you'll not wonder that 
an enthralling enchantment should blind the many who drink their 
Qrst draught at these poisonous fountains. The dancing was not of 
the first order ; the dancers were, with one or two exceptions, 
clumsy and heavy 5 the limbs of some were faulty, and the more 
lank and shaky. They all knew the parts down on the bill of en- 
gagement for them — they emulated each other literally to " toe the 
mark"' the highest. Many of these poor girls have had the run of 
the theatres — clattered their castanets to very moral and respectable 
ears ; and one shudders at the course of training that first led them 
to the foot-lights, from which they have danced down, down to this 
almost the lowest haunt of the pleasure-seeker. 

The comic songs in character which followed, and which were 
sandwiched in between each scene, were not very meritorious — 
you'd hear better at any of the Free and Easy's just round the block. 
The inevitable Irish Paddy, whacking his shillaleh, forgetting his 
brogue, or mixing the Yankee twang with the uncouth hog latin of 
a Yorkshireman. These are miserable representatives to one who 
may have seen a Barney Williams or a John Brougham. But there 
was one exception : Billy Holmes. What is 444 without Billy? — 
Billy with his high white hat, his heavy moustache, his velvet coat, 
his check pants ? If you'd see a jolly sport in character, look at 
Billy ; so tall, so comic, so inventive— for it's known to many that 
Billy Holmes spends his days m composing " something new." Oh, 
how hard Billy hits off the u times"! Who dare look at a "water- 
fall," after hearing Billy, without a smile ? Billy is very broad ; 



20 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

too "broad — vulgar. Billy's vulgarity has a zest for some of the thin- 
blooded old rascals who go there to ogle those poor dancing girls. 
These are " 'ard, very 'ard of 'earin, them old fellows" — they are 
forever poking the ribs of their younger acquaintances for the last 
" thing" Billy got off. 

To say that the negro minstrelsy of 444 is equalled nowhere in 
the city, is not saying much in a city where cork and wool is done 
to deaih. 444 is no blessing to the metropolis. To say that it is 
low, that its actors are vulgar, that it is corruption itself, is truth. 
It's enough of it to add, that even a woman of the town would not 
enter its portals at night as a spectator of its obsence revels. 



CHAPTER V. 

A COCK PIT. 

Toe brutality that showed its hideous head during the July riots 
had long sucked its bloody nourishment in the God-forsaken and 
gin-haunted district of Avenue A. Here was its favored and foul 
den ; here that the savage mob recruited swimmingly. It was here 
that the avenging regulars captured such an extensive armory of 
military equipments. It was here that the besotted fiends danced 
around a poor, crucified negro, and spattered their own hearthstones 
with the brains of another, crashing his skull with jagged-edged 
pavement stones. One shudders as he walks through here at night- 
fall with such cruel traditions cursing it, and the sight of a friendly 
Metropolitan is as welcome as the dawn of day. It is natural to 
suppose, consequently, that the denizens of this uninviting and 
squalid quarter still have a weakness for anything in the brutal line, 
and that their popular excitement is not alone the pouring down 
their halter-itching gullets the cheap rum of the neighborhood. 
Alas ! for dog bating and cock fighting, family rows, chewing choice 
bits off their neighbors' noses, gouging the eyes of their helpless 
females, tramping on bleeding faces the signatures of their nail- 
studded brogans, this home of the wild Irish is an active gymna- 
sium. It was in one of the low groggeries with which this locality 
is festered that the scenes which we are about to delineate took 
place. 

Mike Lynch (for such we will name him,) is its landlord — a full- 
blooded Connaught man and an ex-city official, a roving politician, 
a foreman of the late fire department, a graduate of the college on 
that little isle at the foot of Fifty-first street, E. R., a practical prize 
fighter, and, in the eyes of all "roughdom," a "bully boy" gen- 
erally. 

" Pure Bonded Liquors," in huge letters a yard high, stare lyingly 
over the portals of Mike's groggery. A hundred black bottles and 
numerous dusty demijohns are ranged on the many shelves of the 
windows. The lower panes of these windows, as well as those in 
the doors, are whitewashed, and render the scene within invisible 
to the eyes of passers-by. The old building is about two stories 



A COCK PIT. 21 

high, and as it has been settling for years, the time for its final crash 
upon the glassware of the rumseller is dawning. Perhaps the rotten 
old frame is treasuring up its lowering wrath to break forth on the 
consummation of some future satanic revel more wicked than its 
predecessors. Entering the narrow doors, you find yourself in a 
low-ceiling room, very close and dark. The walls on the left are 
well barricaded with stupendous casks, highly varnished, and gir- 
dled with black, freshly-painted hoops. At the faucets of this grove 
of hogsheads stand copper gallon measures, rusty and slimy, swarm- 
ing with flies and reeking^ with the odor of alcohol. A long bar on 
the right runs the depth of the room, and its bright slab is a soli- 
tary, carefully-polished oasis in this desert of dirt and rust. On it 
stands a heavy-plaited pitcher, a tumbler-rack with an assortment 
of glassware, a big sanded box, like a stone trough, for matches ; 
a square box for segars, and a pewter urn for hot water, well dented 
with the shots of flying tumblers and skimming decanters. Behind 
the slab are portraits of George and Martha Washington (what a 
satire on patriotism !) the Fire Zouaves at Bull Run— highly colored, 
especially the shirts of the Zoo-Zoo's — and the sable steeds of the 
famous Black Horse Cavalry ; a little clock in the belly of a plaster 
sailor, two of Kehoe's clubs, a pile of " fine cut" and " solace" in 
clean siiver wrappers, and a dozen goblets, on the bottoms of which 
are shriveling a dozen jaundiced lemons. This counter is divided 
at the centre with a wide green screen, serving the double purpose 
of screening the back door of the grocery and announcing the com- 
ing race on the Fashion Course, or the card of some ambitious indi- 
vidual soliciting suffrages. A few pictures, cheaply framed and of 
the meanest kind, swing crookedly from rusty nails. A dozen chairs, 
set against the wall, complete the furniture ; these last are firmly 
secured to the floor, as Mike's patrons, when excited, have an itch- 
ing for hurling anything lying around loose, whether it be a chair 
or a hogshead. Behind the bar, in a red fire-shirt and black pants, 
stands Mike, hands in pockets, swinging on his toes, swaying the 
heavy seal of a broad gold chain until it clinks agains the counter 
in harmony with the clock — something characteristic with Lynch 
when anticipating anything unusual. His head i3 that of a modern 
gladiator in all its animal development— round as a bullet, close 
shaven as a Puritan's, with a straight line of scalp across the low 
forehead. Two hollows over his eyebrows, like a death's head 
thinly veiled with flesh ; eyes small and green with a savage fire, 
moistened a little with the fumes of bad whisky ; nose short, pinched 
at the end and broken in the middle, for the bridge was not strong 
enough to carry over the " plug" of a certain heavy " bunch or' 
fives" ; cheek bones acute as a skeleton's ; chin round and hard, 
like the heel of a wooden shoe — the only good-humored feature in 
the whole gallery. In the wide roll of his flannel shirt you behold 
a round, sinewy neck, like half a foot of fluted iron column -swell- 
ing painfully when the blood surges with passion. 

From the landlord we turn to the assembly. It's a gallery of 
mild phizes. Hang-dog faces of newly-fledged thieves ; hardened 
rogues ; souls that have blood on them ; d.rt-begrimed menders of 
the highway, their faces burning with coarse, sandy whiskers, dried 
and wrinkled as a palm-leaf fan, their tough skins impervious to the 



22 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

flush of blood or the gleams of intelligence. Hod carriers, their 
sparse, grey locks matted with mortar, from yellow-stained lips 
squirting tobacco juice at their big, luminous feet, clogged with white 
lime. Young roughs, haggard with the furrows of dissipations 
worming through body and soul, livid with foul blood and pitted 
with small pox. Old men, silvered with hoary locks, childish and 
sunken faced, sharp chinned, grinning wilh toothless gums. They 
arc a motley-dressed band. I rieze coats, very threadbare and tat- 
tered ; corduroy pants, greasy and well worn ; seedy black coats, 
with great sweeping tails like the wings of vampyres ; black pants, 
glossy and painfully tight — the habiliments of an old Jew's stock 
iaking an airing. 

Eight o'clock is the hour appointed for the entertainment, and as 
it lacks several minutes yet, there is a mutual offering of smothered 
curses at the slowness of the little clock in the plaster sailor's belly. 
Other roughs, more wretched and rum-eaten even than these anxious 
v. alters, now stagger and saunter in. Eight o'clock strikes, and 
Mike takes a key trom a rusty nail and a match or two from the big 
sanded box, and disappears through the back door. The crowd fall 
in line, and press against its panels. They make way, however, 
for several young bloods ; these have mysterious humps between 
their breasts and coat sleeves, and are swallowed up by the myste- 
' 1 reus back room. Through the key -hole comes frequent crowing. 
It's not the clear clarion of chanticleer feeling the first glow of the 
morning sun, but a sterner, harder cry— the crow of blooded chickens, 
reared for a sanguinary combat. At last the noise and the light 
gush through a quickly-opened door, and the back rocm as quickly 
swallows up the impatient spectators. 

It's the back yard of the old groggery, cheaply enclosed. Cheap 
lithographs of gigantic roosters and sore-eyed bull terriers hang 
here and there. Eough, improvised benches, elevated as they radi- 
ate from the ring, form standing places, rather than scats, when the 
sport commences. The ring is strewed with tan, and entered by a 
little wicket gate. At this gate stand the three wicked-eyed youtha 
with those mysterious lumps growing out of their sides. Mike has 
left his fiery hydrant to the care of a juvenile barkeeper. He sits 
in a chair at the wicket gate ; under the full glare of the spitting 
gas-jet3. like a weak edition of Nero, sits this scantily-fieshed lieatlrs 
head, puffing his rank weed. An impatient round of stamping is a 
signal not to be offended ; one of the wicked-eyed youths is relieved 
of his hump, and a sprightly little red and black game cock leaps 
upon the tan. He shakes Ms ruffled feathers, stretches his full 
length^and salutes the ring of eager faces with a shrill, clarion crow. 
With his battle cry of defiance, behold the little game cock in his 
full fighting armor ! His scarlet comb i::- trimmed close to the skull ; 
his feathers are plucked, and he seems almost ashamed of his apol- 
ogy for a tail. A sharp spur of steel glitters from his right leg — a 
murderous little bayonet. His little bead eyes scintillate with a 
cruel fire. Mike takes him in his hands, and leaning his elbows on 
his knees, nods to another individual with a draped hump. The 
pack of this last pedlar is a small fowl nearly all red, barberized 
and caparisoned like his opponent. His owner does not let him 
touch the tan, however, but holds him opposite the fowl Mike is 



A COCK PIT. 23 

loosely supporting. Bully Hector and sturdy Ajax cast defying 
glances ; since they left their mother's roost their little gill of cock's 
blood never surged so wickedly. Their small eyes flash out fire ; 
their necks writhe and twist, like a snake's body before darting on 
the paralyzed bird he has charmed. The audience crowd upon the 
front row ; the front row gives way, and leaps upon the tanned 
battle ground ; they know no rules or regulations, that wild herd, 
panting for a sight of the spurting blood of those gallant little 
cocks. 

The defiance of Mike's brows — the " fall back, now, and be d — d to 
you" — are heeded no more than a barrier of the chicken's feathers. 
There's a very little space left now for the combat, and you squeeze 
in with this gang of outlaws to be fortunate enough to get a sight of 
the cruel sport. There's a flutter, a scream almost human, and the 
gallant games arc at it ; the fowl duel [excuse the pun,] has com- 
menced fairly. They look equally matched in might, and not very 
disproporticnate in size. They parry, they thrust, they go at it 
coolly and scientifically, as if trying each other's strength or feeling 
for weak points, like their wicked examplars in a " mill." There ! 
cool deliberation serves no longer 5 their few ounces of fighting 
blood is fairly up. The tan and feathers fly like autumn leaves, 
and in the mingled mist flash the bright, deadly gaffs. They leap 
in the air, now one higher than the other ; they bury their sharp 
bills and gripe with their strong feet ; frenzied, electrified, with a 
mutual hate goading them on, they battle fiercer and fiercer each 
moment. The wild crowd are breathless ; the cruel blood curdles 
around their cold hearts, their faces pale, their eyes start from their 
sockets and grow green and luminous as basilisks'. Their own wild 
passions seem incarnated in that pair of feathered creatures. 

There is a sudden cessation now ; the fury of the little storm is 
over. That little cry, and the sharp gaff of the red cock pierces the 
heart of hi3 antagonist, and the red blood is staining the golden 
talma that the poor victim sported in the rays of the morning's sun. 
O ! how it chilled us, that faint, wild, cold scream, as the fated steel 
went home! One dreamed it not possible for a poor little game to 
give forth such a death-knell. They toss the warm carcase of the 
dead warrior aside, and the shouts over the dizzy, weak little victor 
are deafening. ! spare him further battle ; be content with his 
little laurels ! Alas! his task is not finished; the hounds demand 
more murder from this feathered Sparta eus. 

They soon set before him a fresh rival. Half blinded, his feathery 
plumes matted with blood, he reels, then with a desperate courage, 
that provokes even from these hardened breasts a merit of applause, 
he hurls the full force of his remaining strength in one fell blow. 
He is again a victor ! The bets had gone heavy against him, he 
looked so weak and spent when this fresh rival touched the tan. 
The curses of the losers were as uproarious as the pleased winners' 
shouts. This now gave way to a mutual admiration for the plucky 
little bird. His owner takes him to his breast ; bis life-blood stains 
his shirt bosom ; but, alas ! his beady eyes are glazing fast, his little 
neck can no longer hold up his s- carlet crest ; he'll never crow an- 
other defiant challenge. Away goes his still warm body, flung upon 
the pile of his victims — the little cock will fight no more! 



24 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

Crael fport — cruel savages ! Who wonders at their fiendishnesa 
—their wanton brutality on those hot July nights, with the heavens 
red with their incendiaries ? Have we forgotten of the poor creat- 
ures, whose only crime was a dusky skin, fleeing from their bloody 
clubs and stones, crying hopelessly even to us to save them ? These 
fiends are the only patrons of this cock pit, thank God ! 



CHAPTER VL 

AT A FREE AND EAST. 

The love of music is not the monopoly of a certain class. The 
sweating crowd of a minstrel hall, stamping and whistling for a re- 
petition of that " bully song," dashing away now and then, with 
horny fists, a glistening tear, appreciate a plaintive ballad or a well 
sung aria with all the zest of a white-gloved audience at the Academy 
of Music. We have witnessed the pea-nut-munohing-gods of the 
Old Bowery pit, those sharp, little news-vending mercuries, its in- 
veterate patrons, calm their restless natures until their dirt-begrimed 
faces beamed with a soul-lit radiance, as some childish warbler 
chaunted in her feeble treble the song of ''Little Eva." They tell 
us that in the public schools on the East side, and down by the 
docks of tac lower wards, the young pupils roll out more lustily 
their music tasks, and with a purer relish, than their more dainty 
little friends in the higher walks of life. The ballad dealers at the 
Park gates, with their five hundred yards of penny songs, find many 
patrons, and the new melodies of the vagrant piper and the itine- 
rant grinder are re-echoed from every old tenement. While the 
squalid offspring of the great unwashed, tramping on the heels ol 
the military bands, regale themselves with cheap music, their fathers 
and brothers stroll into the alehouses, and smoke their black pipes 
at the evening harmonies. These musical gatherings hold their 
conclaves in all parts of the town ; in Hester street, in the cellars 
of the Bowery, and in the deserted family mansions of Houston 
street. 

Longing for a radical change after a surfeit of imported Italian 
lungs at the Academy, leaving a prima donna fairly entombed be- 
neath a mound of expensive boqnets, we strolled down Broadway 
on a certain Saturday night of the past — for it's on a Saturday night 
that these vocal entertainments present themselves in all their glory. 
Leaving the gloomy towers of St. Thomas' church in the night 
shadows, we passed into that Babylonish highway, baptised by the 
Metropolitan Acton, " God-forsaken Houston street." Groping along 
through knots of gamblers, fallen virtues, and blackguards generally, 
bestowing honest admiration upon a solitary brave metropolitan, 
fiagering nervously the leather thongs of his hardy club, we came 
at last beneath the rays of a sickly gas jet, windy and asthmatical 
in its tomb of red transparency. On the outside of this sanguinary 
lantern, in a reflex of white letters, were the magic words, "Free 
and Easy." A party, decidedly the worse from liquor, and none the 
better from the potent sway of melody, were shuffling down the 



'■■;-!,, : .^ --i •. •:.'.:,.;«,,(.;;,; ,.|j/j/! ''j/jf #': V "^jli'jij'j 





26 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

steps of the building, to the great dismay of a score of the lazzaroni 
jostled from the platform, upon which they were exhibiting their 
sightless eyes, maimed limbs, and emaciated babes sucking from 
marble breasts. The blasted hopes of a few pennies set the vagrant 
crew cursing and mumbling, and it made one shudder, the eciio of 
those shotted oaths following in the wake of the zig-zag marchers. 

But let us enter. Wedging through the barricade of beggars, we 
found ourselves crossing the threshold of a recent family mansion, 
now transformed into a house of public entertainment. The hall is 
blocked off at the foot of the stairs, and its back passage is devoted 
to the purposes of a bar. A little window in the centre of the 
partition, with a walnut shelf, stares you in the face. This is for 
the convenience of the females from the neighboring tenements, 
who stro 1 in frequently for a quart or pint of beer. Some of these 
customers of the other sex linger at this little hole, or poke their 
muffled faces in at the door and gateway, carolling snatches of the 
songs that their lords and masters are applauding so lustily. Across 
the hall to the right, we enter what was once the front parlor of 
the late residence. The mantles and fire grate3 are still there. 
Here are a few tables covered with torn and beer stained papers, 
some dilapidated chairs, prints of England's prince and Queen, 
George Washington, the American flag, and an aged clock ; while 
the front of the bar, like the booth of a cheap Johnny, stares at you 
with all its trinkets of glass, plated and earthern mugs, polished 
beer pumps, big casks, rusty pistols, stuffed owls, augur-bored tar- 
gets, and a hundred other gimcracks in the line of a barkeeper's 
souvenirs. In this frame was the body of a short-haired, low fore- 
head, broad-shouldered, shirt-sleeved bartender, sweating and puff- 
ing with the manual labor of pumping beer into an unlimited stock 
of small glasses. This room opens into another, longer and worse 
ventilated. The walls of this are Lung on every side svith the litho- 
graphs of muscular bruisers, who are taking air-baths in short 
clothes, diminutive black and tan pups, sore-mouthed, lean-car- 
cassed white bull dogs ; wiry racers with blotches of white to por- 
tray their glossy hides, and a portrait of Sherman, unshaved, eating 
the corner of a main-sail collar. A long table, like a walnut back- 
bone, runs down the centre of the floor, flanked by rows of stout 
stools with two high chairs at either end. On a raised platform 
against the wall stan is a gurgling piano, ring-wornied by wet beer 
glasses, and loaded with piles of mutilated sheet music. The floors 
are deeply sanded, and the crunching and shuffling of feet is like a 
mass meeting of jig-dancers. 

Both rooms are crowdad, and the stench of fetid breaths, bad to- 
bacco, and sour beer is intolerable. An old Scotchman, with a nose 
worn out with snuff, three sandy-headed boys, selected for their 
easy locomotion, worry the barkeeper, drench coat-collars, and 
break glasses, in their ardor to serve out the beer to the thirsty 
crowd. Every seat is occupied, nay even the window sills and cor- 
ners of the piano. The audience was the most motley set we have 
beheld since the July riot3. Low-browed, thick-necked, small-eyed, 
nose-worn bruisers — several front teeth gone, slashed and pitted 
cheeks, slit lips and scarred chins. Gamblers flashily dressed, care- 
fully shaved, haggard eyes, wickedly pale, running great risks with 



AT A FREE AND EASY. 27 

their diamond pins and pendent watch guards. Weak, over-grown 
boys, sipping even the flat beer with a shudder, and their lips twitch- 
ing with the rank juice of cheap segars. Old men, their bald heads 
glistening like snuff bladders, bending stiff, bloodless ears with 
horny hands to catch the warmth of some low song. Hackmen, 
carmen, firemen, greasy machinists, dry goods drummers — men in 
blue flannel, in red flannel ; in light coats, in threadbare coats, in all 
sorts of coats. Your regular New York rough, in his high-peaked 
black felt hat, his long-tailed coat, his light shiny black pants — the 
sailor, the volunteer. 

Ratty-tap-tap-tap — down comes the wooden mallet of a small, 
dark-looking little man in one of the big chairs, the president ; the 
tall fellow with the handsome black eyes is the vice, and has thrown 
his left leg over the arm of the chair at the foot of the table. 

" Order, gents, if you please," says the little president, with a 
voice like the roar of the biggest bull in Bashen : " McLangley, if 
you please, gents." 

Ratty-tap-tap ! 

The roar of the turbulent assembly has ceased. Up pops a little 
man and elbows his way to the side of the jingling piano. The 
crowd pat him on the shoulders in passing. All eyes are upon the 
little man perehed on the edge of the platform ; he has one hand on 
the piano — a tableaux after the style of Webster tickling the bust 
of Washington in that print over there. McLangly is the prince of 
ballad singers. He has had the run of the minstrel halls and the 
concert saloons and has now gone down to a Free and Easy. He is 
quite an oddity. Short, thick-set, with a very pale face, a very red 
nose, and a very moist eye. His pug proboscis is very radiant in- 
deed with the true colors of old King Bourbon, to whom he is a 
loyal subject. His pale forehead by contrast with his flaming 
trumpet is a redeeming feature, and his mouth has a humorous 
twitch that is a capital auxiliary to a descriptive ballad. His hair 
is as black and crispy as a Jew's. After slinging his old slouched 
hat upon the pile of soiled music, he winks to the pianist, who 
knows by instinct Jemmy's choice, and then carols away melodious- 
ly. He is perfectly self-possessed as he flings bis noles over the 
sea of amused faces. His choruses are wall known, and as husky 
voices take them up, he rests from his labors and chats with the 
youth at the musical instrument. He, too, is a marvel — that lively 
pianist. Every air is at his finger's end, never weary of playing ; 
the heat of the room, the suffocation of bad breath and tobacco an- 
noys him not. With a weed in the corner of his mouth, and a glass 
of gin at his elbow, he rattles away before the songs, through the 
songs and between the songs. He is accompanied by a French horn, 
whose breath is rather short, and who winds his bugle spasmodically. 

When Jemmy had finished, the impatient crowd bellowed for the 
song of the " Hot Corn Girl" — a mythical little creature, " who 
lived in Baxter street, in an aul-ley." Jemmy did it inimitably. 
In his low notes he is a bit husky— a fault of his chronic dryness, 
which no amount of gin can dampen. A latent humor still clings 
to this rummy old cove. His Irish blood tells potently in his ren- 
dering of the " rich brogue," the roll of which is not equalled by 
a Brougham or a Barney Williams, There was something deeply 



28 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

interesting in the nratnal approbation that the old chap awakened 
by his lunny songs ; a dissenting expression would have gone hard 
with the boldest. One was reminded of the rough old clansmen of 
Scotia, when the feeble bard, striking the strings of his harp, charms 
down the hellish passions and the wild frenzies their deep-drinking 
orgies had culminated in. 

Jemmy's song ended, and all the noises out of Pandemonia never 
equalled the stamping, the cat-calling, the jingling of glasses, that 
followed. As the entertainment Waned, the copious draughts of gin 
and beer which had been working silently, showed strongly in 
flushed faces and blearing eye?. The climax of a rousing carousal 
was dawning. Even Jemmy's no-se was a shade redder. Timid vo- 
lunteer ventured to do a bit in the musical line. The ridiculous 
exhibition of a gawky youth, with big feet and club like fingers, il- 
lustrating the song of a sewing machine operator, was the burlesque 
of burlesques. The sentiment of the songs now were very course 
and amorous. At last a ponderous countryman, half-seas over, 
awkward as a colt, his big bumpkin face radiant ag a fire balloon, 
staggered to the platform and ventnred a song. It was spicy fun 
to the more maudlin drinkers. It set the taps a-flowing, it nearly 
exhausted the old Scotchman and the three smdy-headed boys. 

" Chorus, gents, if you please/' shouted the chair. 

" Chorus, gents, if you please/' echoed the " vice ;" and the 
chorus to the larking farmer was rolled out with a vengeance. 

At this stage of the evening's revels, things took a rather rough 
turn. The songs were more indecent and decidedly worse sung. 
One fellow, right royally drunk, flung his huge carcass across one of 
the small tables. The glasses crashed and snapped, the table 
creaked, split, and came to the floor, and over its wreck rolled the 
drunken mass, shoving spittoons, upsetting stools, and kicking in a 
thicket of shins and knee-pans. The scent of a brawny row was 
too apparent. In vain did the tireless pianist jingle his loudest ; in 
vain did the chairman hoist the now disjointed Jemmy McLangley 
upon his liquor-soaked pins for another oily song to send over the 
troubled sea. 

We willingly floated out with the pressing crowd, and as we 
snuffed the night air, shoals of jolly fellows made the night hideous 
with their roarings to the pale stars and the spectral lamp-posts. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE DANCE HOUSES. 

If Terpsichore, the heathen goddess who was supposed to pre- 
side over the gay and festive dance, had been permitted to visit 
the temples devoted to her worship in the low slums of New York, 
she would probably have hung up her fiddle and retired from the 
profession in disgust. It is along the river fronts of the city, and 
in the streets tributary to them, that these nurseries of depravity, 
licentiousness, murder, and all manner of atrocity, chiefly have their 
location. They abound more upon the Eastern verge of the lower 



THE DANCE HOUSES. 29 

part of the city than elsewhere, the most notorious of them being 
situated in Water and Cherry streets. It is in these streets, chiefly' 
that seafaring men find a temporary shelter in the numerous sailors, 
lodging-houses with which, the, quarter seethes. The crimps have 
their strong-hold here, and Jack's hard-earned wages and well- 
fought-I'or prize money is the in-flowing capital upon which these 
sharks carry on their infamous calling. If you walk the place by 
day— and it would not be advisable for you to do so by night— you 
will observe the nautical character of the signs and names of the 
various places of entertainment. " iNeptune's Retreat," invites the 
mariner to repose at one corner, and. over the way, yonder, a very 
ricketty-looking crib informs you by its sign-board that it rejoices 
in the big name of the " Oceanic Arbor." There is a " Sailor's 
Rest," where many a poor fellow has doubtless paid dearly for his 
night's repose, and " The Harpoon" strongly suggests to the be- 
holder the possibility of a lodger being occasionally mistaken for a 
' ; right whale,"^ and " nailed to the counter" with the terrible fish 
spear, from which the den takes its name. 

Jack ashore has long been notable for his tendency to indulge in 
the lively dance. Yv 'ho has not heard of, nay, seen, a sailor's horn- 
pipe, if not in real life, at least on the stage ? So it is that, in most 
seaport towns, Jack's taste has been catered to by the establishment 
of the clas3 of tavern known as the u dance house." In no city in 
the world, perhaps, are those places of resort more rife, mere disso- 
lute, and more dangerous, than they are in the city of New York 
and as but few " outsiders" ever have a chance of visiting them in 
safety, a brief account of them will doubtless be acceptable to many 
readers. 

We will go together then, as it were — the reader and the writer 

into the low district of the town drained by Water street, and have 
a look at things there after dark. Not alone do we go, however 
my country friend, because, if you and I happen to be ever so ath- 
letic even, and armed all the way down the spine, that would serve 
us in but little stead, in case of a " difficulty," unless we had 
with us, as guide and companion, one of the recognized officers of 
the law. By application to the proper authorities, we, as members 
of the journalistic fraternity, are promptly provided with the ser- 
vices of an intelligent and thoroughly posted detective, with whom 
gathering much information as we walk along, we soon arrive in the 
heart of the dangerous region. But our detective friend, although 
a bold man, is also a discreet one. He has had his little experiences. 
Esyping the green light of a police station in one of the narrow by- 
ways, he makes for it, and presently returns with a reinforcement of 
a very smart looking officer, attired, like himself, in plain citizen's 
costume. He would like, he says, to have a handy patrolman to 
back him in case of trouble, and there was no telling but such might 
happen at any moment. 

Presently we stop before a dingy den with a lantern on the door 
and a sound of shaky music within. We enter the ricketty portal 
and find ourselves at once in a long, low apartment, bare of any 
kind of furniture excepting the benches that stand against the walls. 
At the farther end of the room there is a bar, not different in its 
general aspect from the bars of most low groggcries, and behind it 



30 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

there stands an ugly fellow of sinister aspect, who has control of the 
abominable poisons that are there retailed Placards hu og up be- 
hind the bar inform the customers that " all drinks are 10 cents," 
and, furthermore, that " all dances are 20 cents" — which, is a proof 
of the great value attached by slum society to the latter luxury. 
There does not happen to be any dance going on at the moment of 
our entrance, so let us pause a moment and take note of the sur- 
roundings. Next the bar, and in a line with it, though elevated a 
foot or two above it, is a sort of pulpit, in which are seated two 
musicians — one of whom tunes feebly the notes of a wheezy violin, 
the other is a stout mulatto, who has rings in his ears, blue and red 
anchors tattood upon his gingerbread-colored hands, and bears other 
indications about him of being at off-times a follower of the sea ; the 
instrument upon which he performs is a tambourine — and you will 
observe, as we extend our investigation into other dance houses, 
that such are the simple orchestral elements in every one of them — 
a fiddle and a tambourine. 

Walk up toward the bar, now, along the sanded floor, and take a 
glance round the walls as we go. Ihere are about fifty people in 
the room, most of them seated on the benches along the walls. 
Twenty or so of these are women. They represent the lowest type 
ot the " dolly-mop," or sailor's courtesan. Not the n Poll," or 
" Sue," mind you, of the stage sailor, with whom he leaves his like- 
ness and a lock of his hair when he goes afloat, but hard, bitter har- 
ridans, who rob him when they have a chance, drinking with him 
and dancing with him in a cold-blooded, business-like way, entirely 
devoid of the mirth usually attributed to the partners of those who 
" go down into the sea in ships." They are all dressed in a style of 
tawdry finery that is repulsive. Immense " waterfalls," made appa- 
rently of horses' tails, sit like poultices on the napes of their nec^s. 
These appendages are profusely decorated with faded ribbons and 
sown all over with spangles. Short skirts, frequently of bright tar- 
tan patterns, appear to be quite the thing here, showing a good deal 
of soiled petticoat and coUon stocking. Some of the women have 
little bells attached to their boots or the bottom of their skirts, 
which make a wild, savage jingle when they dance. Never, in any 
one of the places, as we go, do we see one woman bearing the least 
pretension to good looks. If any of them were born fair of feature, 
all trace of the natural beauty has long since been obliterated by 
the attrition of their life. Ihe grooves in which licentious passion 
and crime run to and fro in the mind, have their counterparts in the 
lines that mark the face. Paint is laid on an inch thick, but it can- 
not conceal the expression of bestial depravity that characterises 
these wretched creatures in every case. Can you conceive of men 
brutal enough to be fascinated by such stagnant syrens as these ? 
And yet there are — and so much the worse for humanity. 

The masculine element here does no* consist exclusively of Jack 
Tars. Many of the rough-loo bing men seated on the benches, or 
drinking at the bar, are red skirted fellows who probably make 
their living in some way as : longshoemen, while some among them 
are pretty well known to the police as river thieves — coast pirates 
in a small way, who commit their depredations among the shipping 
at the wharves. They are a hard-looking set, wearing, mostly very 



THE DANCE HOUSES. 31 

slouching, seamless woollen caps, with tartan borders and distorted 
peaks. By some instinct, they all seem to be aware of the presence 
of officers, although the latter are in citizens' clothes. They scowl 
a good deal, but keep quiet, huddling close up to the women who 
sit beside them, and with whom they are drinking and interchang- 
ing a good deal of " chaff." 

Our guide now introduces us specially to the keeper of the place, 
whose hand, you will remark, as he grasps yours, is of a very coarse 
and horny texture. He is a fellow of great volubility of tongue, 
and likes to pass himself off as having once been a regular pugilist, 
a matter open to some doubt, as we subsequently learn. There is 
no doubt, however, that he has made a large sum of money by his 
unclean business, and could retire to-morrow, upon a competent in- 
come, if he had a mind to do so. But these fellows never have. 
They have no resources with which to divert their muggy minds did 
they retire from business ; and, as their habits of life do not favor 
longevity, they generally cease to encumber the earth at a compa- 
ratively early age. For the greater part, their children continue 
the business, although there are known instances of persons now 
moving in wealthy circles, whose parentage has been traced to the 
crimp dens and dance houses of the river-side slums. 

On visiting these places it is absolutely necessary to patronize the 
bar. Not exactly necessary to drink, indeed 5 for, having had one 
taste of the liquor poured out for you, nothing is less likely than 
that you will be in a hurry to drain the maddening cup. It is a 
wonder how people can drink that stuff three times and live. The 
proprietor joins us in the libation, at the invitation of the detective, 
whom he knows quite well. Then, having a very keen eye to busi- 
ness, he tells us that although drinking is a thing to which he has no 
positive objection, yet he is conscious that dancing is his forte. He 
could not live without dancing, he says, because it is the only kind 
of exercise which his business allows him to enjoy, and he is a strict- 
ly business man. " All dances 20 cents," says the card hanging be- 
hind the bar, and you may readily guess that it is not altogether for 
the love of dancing that the proprietor now orders the music to 
strike up, and busies himself in the formation of a set. He makes 
great efforts to induce you and me to select partners from among the 
chaste syrens along the walls, but we " don't see it," you know, 
although the officers think it might be a good think to do, once in a 
way, on conciliatory principles and " for the good of the house." 
Indeed, one of them puts his principles into practice, and leads out 
from her retirement by the wall a tall, square-shouldered " ripper," 
with very decided lines about the corners of her horse-shoe mouth, 
and a badly-disguised extravasation of blood around her leit eye. 
The proprietor, who is in his shirt-sleeves, leads out two or three, 
and many of the men around also select their partners, and pres- 
ently all are mixed np together in a sort of cotillion— a quadrille 
with a sketch of waltz in it. The sounds of the fiddle and tambou- 
rine come but feebly through the thumping and shuffling of feet 
now, which is not surprising when ycu consider that most of the 
men wear cowskin boots, and use them with considerable vigor, too 

The dances are repeated very often, as new-comers keep drop- 
ping in. On this occasion everything is so quiet that yon ask the 



32 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

detective whether " difficulties" are not of rather frequent occur- 
rence in the dance-houses, and how it is that this assembly is so 
harmonious ? 

" Depends entirely upon who comes in/' replies that cool-headed 
functionary "Any moment now, while we are silting here, a man 
may come in who has an account to settle with one of the blue- 
shirts or red-shirts, er a spite against the bar-keeper, or against the 
proprietor as like as not, and then it's all Lnitc and pistol, and 
somebody's sure to get hurt. In many cases some one gets shot 
who has nothing to do with the row. It wouldn't be so much mat- 
ter if the fellows only bit each other." 

" How do you manage to make your authority known in such 
cases ?" 

" By showing this," replied the officer, producing his shield from 
his trousers pocket 5 " but it don't always have the effect. We 
must not forget to fetch these along besides," and he just allows 
you the least peep at a small club concealed inside his coat, and a 
revolver cunningly stowed away whore he can readily put his band 
upon it. 

" It must be a difficult thing, in a free light, to determine who 
struck the first blow, or who fired the fatal shot. How about that ?" 

' ; Come along," said the detective, " and ill show you a bouse 
where there was one of those mixed fights only a few nights ago." 

Once more we tread the unclean, haunted street, until wo arrive 
at a red lamp, on which is painted the name Antonio Antonelii. It 
is the beacon light of a dance house, not differing materially from 
the test in its general features, but chiefly patronized by Italian and 
Spanish sailors, and outcast foreign rascals of many queer lingoes, 
who are engaged about the wharves. Here the women seemed to 
be of several types and races — Spanish, Italian and German — the 
latter, perhaps, predominating. There is a sprinkling of Irish 
among them, perhaps, but all details of character are merged into 
one debauched type, as is usually the case with the abandoned crea- 
tures who crowd the cribs of great seaport towns. 

" See that Dutch girl there !" said the detective, irreverently, 
" the one with the net full of yellow hair hanging on the back of 
her neck," and he pointed to a German fraulein of thirty-five or so, 
short of stature, and of extremely square build. " Well, it was 
about her that the difficulty happened. A Portuguese sailor took 
her away from the man she was dancing with — a South American 
greaser, I guess — and when the first knife was drawn, there were 
twenty flashing in a jiffy. The Portuguese had his thumb severed 
right down to the wrist, and no one can tell whose knife did it. 
One of the fellows Lad a long knife driven into his back, and he 
died the next day. When the police came in, the row was just over, 
because nearly every man engaged in it was down from loss of 
blood. The whole houseful was taken into custody, but none could 
positively say who struck the fatal blow, and so the only thing that 
came of it was that the rowdies, who were all seamen, were sent on 
board the ships to which they belonged." 

" Are there many robberies committed in these cribs ?" 

" More than are ever heard of outside the place ; drugged liquor 
is the commonest way of doing it. A girl will find out, easy, whe- 



THE DANCE HOUSES, 33 

ther a sailor has lately been paid off, or is worth so much prize- 
money, and has it about him 5 nothing easier than to put him asleep, 
and a robbed sailor has about as much idea how to go about recov- 
ering his property as a four year old child. He takes another drink 
when he wakes up, if he has money enough left to pay for it, and 
then goes back to his ship, and gels into just the same sort of scrape 
again the next time he comes back." 

And now we go to three or four other cribs of character similar 
to the ones just described, most of them having attached to them a 
story of some hideous outrage or crime. There are drunken men 
in several of them, but stupidly drunk beyond ihe power of crea- 
ting any dangerous disturbance. Probably their liquor has been 
drugged, and if so, it might not be a bad plan to pass a law prohib- 
iting any other kind of liquor from being served out in the dance 
houses and all such dens. 

In one of the places, the tambourinist is a genius in his way. He 
is an uncommonly fine-looking fellow, with a handsome, open face, 
and has been a man-of-war' 's man, as we learn. His mastery over 
the simple disk of sheep-skin, with which he gives time to the feet 
of the dancers, is really wonderful, and he takes such delight in the 
instrument, himself, that even during the pauses between the sets 
he holds it close to his ear, and brings soft purring sounds from it 
that remind him, perhaps, of the far-off breakers on some tropical 
lee shore. One would think that the man might do better than 
thrum parchment in a sink of iniquity ; but the detective says that 
he is a half-simple fellow, who cares nothing where he is so long as 
people give him enough to eat and drink, and let him go back to 
sea whenever be has a mind to. Better for him to be at the bottom 
of it than here. 

It would hardly occur to you, perhaps, that there could be the 
least bit of romance connected with the inmates of the dance houses. 
Could we only know all, there might be more of that than is suggested 
to us by the low and vulgar scene. Yet there is no class of so- 
ciety so low, according to the police records, as to be destitute of 
its occasional spice of vicissitude. Only a few years ago, an ad- 
vertisement appeared in some English and American papers, inquir- 
ing for the nearest of kin to some person who had died leaving a 
large estate Long and patient investigation, such as is exercised 
only by solicitors in the hopes of a large reward, disclosed the fact 
that the heiress to the property was, at the time, an inmate of one of 
the low dance-cribs in Cherry street, or in some other street trav- 
ersing that obscene precinct of the city. The thing was established 
beyond a doubt, and the history of it is as follows : The girl was of 
a very respectable Irish family, the branch of it to which she be- 
longed, however, having fallen into decay. They had gone through 
the Encumbered Estates Court, and, with the small amount of money 
that accrued to them from the sales, had emigrated to America, leav- 
ing behind them one daughter — a beautiful and accomplished girl 
—who was tbe governess in an English family of wealth and posi- 
tion. From some circumstance or another, not now remembered by 
the writer, this young lady resigned or lost her situation, and soon 
after sailed for New York, with the intention of joining her rela- 
tives, who had taken up their abode in a Western state. She trav- 



3-1 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

eled alone, and in rather humble guise, for her purse was very 
scanty. Lonely as she was, poor girl, it was easy for her to grow 
intimate with a male protector. The first mate of the vessel was at- 
tentive to her, and she was grateful for his good offices. He was a 
libertine, and, on arriving at New York, he decoyed her under 
promise of marriage, and effected her ruin. It is a fact that when 
a well-educated woman falls, she falls faster than one accustomed 
to a rougher life. Waking or sleeping, her earlier associa- 
tions are ever before her, and the burden of life would be intolera- 
ble but for drink. And so the hapless victim of the scoundrel mari- 
ner took to that as her last resource, and she was the most blasphe- 
mous and hardened inmate of the crib to which they traced her 
after so long a search. There was no possibility of making her 
comprehend the news they had for her, because her mind was utter- 
ly warped and withered from drink ; and she died of delirium tre- 
mens in one of the city hospitals a few days after, without ever 
knowing that she was mistress of money enough to have built a 
convent or founded a Magdalen asylum. 

Such are the 'longshore dance houses of the city, but more in the 
heart of it there flourish others of a different stamp, so far as the 
type of inmates goes, and also differing in general appearance and 
arrangement. Some of these are attached to pugilistic " drums," 
and such like places, to which an outsider would hardly attribute 
any establishment beyond the saw-dusted bar-room, in which beetle- 
browed characters congregate by day and night to drink strong li- 
quors and discuss topics of the " ring." One of these resorts, which 
we have now in our mind's eye, is but a small crib to look at from 
the street, and when you enter it you will think, mayhap, that it 
doe3 not take many customers of a night. Back of it, however, 
there is an extension, reached by a narrow, creaking stair, and hav- 
ing ascended this, you will probably find a very large crowd of both 
sexes assembled in a queer, irregular sort of ball-room. Bulkheads 
cross out here and there, and barriers and railings that seem to have 
no particular use, and every now and then you will find that you 
will have to go up or down steps to reach some part of the floor to 
which your attention is directed. 

The crowd is of quite another order to that of the marine cribs. 
There are no partners provided by the house, and the women, who 
come in their shawls and bonnets, attended by their young men, ap- 
pear to be generally respectable and well-behaved. What they are 
it would be hard for one " outside the ropes" to say. Ask your 
detective friend whether women of the town find their way hither, 
and he will probably respond by requesting your definition of a 
" woman of the town." Many of these females, however, are the 
mistresses of the half-pugilistic, half-pickpocket, kind of young fel- 
lows who swarm to the place. Some of them look so " decent," 
that it would be hard to think of them as frail, if fair, and you will 
fain set them down as sweethearts only ; but it is to be feared that 
such cases are exceptionable, and the idea is a romantic one — for 
you. We can take our seats, carelessly, at any of the tables in the 
room, for the place is well watched, and disturbances do not often 
occur here ; though that, as the detective said in the case of the 
dong-shore dens, " depends upon who comes in," Waiters, or, in 



THE DANCE HOUSES. 35 

some instances, waitresses, ask you what you wiU please to drink, 
and, if the liquor i3 not precisely up to the Delinonico standard, 
still it is not the absolute poison dealt out over the bar in the 
places we have just left. Doubtless there are a good many thieves 
in the place, and we are quite certain that your black-muzzled fel- 
low with his felt hat slouched over his brows, was last seen by us in 
Essex Market police court, " with gyves upon his wrists." There is 
a space on the floor, here, dedicated to the demon of dance. The 
timbers of the place creak to the swaying of the dancers. The mu- 
sic is usually that of fiddles, destitute of the accompaniment of a 
tambourine. 

Still another class of dance-houses is that exclusively devoted to 
the pastimes of the African race. About Wooster street and West 
Broadway, in the neighborhood of Canal street, several of these 
are in " full blast." Dancing is an amusement native to the light- 
hearted Ethiop, whose morals do not prohibit him, either, from his 
favorite enjoyment of gambling and the vices that follow in its 
train. Most of the negro dance-houses, then, are a combination of 
that sort of amusement with the gaming-table and the mysterious 
4 — 11 — 44. Some frightfully depraved characters are to be seen in 
these places. The knife is used with great freedom by the negro, 
who seldom shows any fight unless he has " cutlery" about him — 
which he generally has. They fight among each other like wolves, 
but do not often interfere with people of the other color. Some- 
times, in these dance-houses, you may see quadroon or mulatto wo- 
men of immense physical proportions and rather good looks. Nor 
is it unusual to find in them specimens of female human nature 
bloated and distorted out of all semblance to humanity, and of in- 
tellect apparently but little superior to that of the so-called " low- 
er animals." 

Curious feats of ventriloquism are sometimes performed in these 
places of entertainment. The negro seems to have a gift in that 
way. Some years ago the writer heard one in a dance-house in the 
western section of the city, whose performance was really remark- 
able. His jingling of bells in his chest was such, that a suspicion 
might have arisen that he had swallowed some of the Swiss bell- 
ringers, and his concert of farm-yard sounds was quite a master- 
piece in its way. 

Well, it is late by the time we have finished our rounds. As we 
pass through a narrow street, on our way home, sounds of revelry 
are heard approaching, and the officers pause to listen. The revel- 
lers prove to be a few German stragglers, on their way from some 
"Harmony Hall." 

" Only Dutchmen," said the detective ; " they won't do much 
harm ; but if they were Italians, now, or Irish, it would be quite 
another thing!" 

Which was a pretty good comment, after all, on the nationalities 
that make up our mixed community. 



36 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

CHAPTER VIH. 

THE POLICE STATIONS. 

Night in the various Police stations of the city is a time of record 
for crimes, offences, miseries and horrors, as various in their kinds 
as the types of character and occupation that necessarily go to the 
making up of a great cosmopolitan community. It is at night that 
crime prowls, panther-like, in the darkened alleys and by-ways, 
ready, ever, for a spring upon its unsuspecting prey. Nor is night 
in the highways a season, merely, for the gay throng, the busy tur- 
moil of carriages, and the dazzling glare of the gas-lit scrolls that 
blaze over the vestibules of the places of amusement. Along 
Broadway itself, from the Battery to far away up town, there flour- 
ish dens of crime in which the gambler, the rowdy and the harlot of 
cruel heart, carry on, nightly, their infernal orgies undisturbed, until 
some knife or pistol has done its bloody work. Then it is at night 
that the police make their periodical and somewhat spasmodic de- 
scents upon the places of ill repute ; and so it is that, night after 
night, the several stations are the scenes of strange and "sensa- 
tional" dramas, representing phases of life and death, in which the 
actors may be said to belong to all classes of the community. 

Let us take a round of the station-houses together, good reader — 
not necessarily in one night, of course, but every now and then for 
a while — until we have sifted the grain from many of them. Our 
experiences, you may depend upon it, will not vary, materially, from 
those which have fallen in the way of the present writer, many a 
time and oft. 

1 ou may know the Police station-house at night from a long way 
off, by the great green light that shines over the entrance-door — the 
jealous eye, as it were, that watches over the precinct during the 
dark hours. These establishments vary somewhat in the style of 
their fittings, according to the localities 'in which they happen to be 
situated. Enter some up-town one through the swinging door, and 
you will find yourself in a large and handsome room, along one 
side of which there runs a long counter or desk ; behind this sits 
theofficer on duty, who registers and disposes of, for the night, all 
delinquents brought in. There is a space on one side of this, en- 
closed with an iron railing painted green, and within this the pris- 
oners and _ complainants take their stand. All the woodwork is 
painted in imitation of oak. Behind where the officer sits is a book- 
case, containing several volumes of reference on subjects connected 
with the laws of the land. Off this apartment, there are several 
others for the accommodation of the force, and cells for the recep- 
tion of detained prisoners are a necessary feature of the establish- 
ment. The whole place has a trim, well-aired and official appear- 
ance, though in winter it is too often heated to excess by large 
stoves, Some of the station-houses in the dirtier wards are not 
quite such stylish concerns as those in the upper quarters of the 
city. The atmosphere in which they fester seems to have affected 
their complexions a little, and they look mouldy and damp enough. 



THE STATION IIOUSES. 37 

For the classes of crime on record in them, however, there is less to 
choose between the two than might generally be supposed. 

We enter an up-town station-house, and find there that the detec- 
tive attached to the precinct (each police precinct I123 one or two of 
its smartest officers detailed for detective duty,) has just come . in 
with a prisoner whom he has been after for some time past, and 
whom he " spotted" to-day while riding in a Third avenue car. 
The prisoner is a rather low-sized, thick-set man, of dark complex- 
ion, with a black moustache, and the rest of his beard in a state of 
bluish stubble. He is well enough dressed, but has a seedy, hang- 
dog look, and the expression of his face is not improve:! by a very 
perceptible cast in one of his eyes. The complaint against him, on 
the present occasion is that, some weeks ago, he ingratiated himself 
with a stranger in the sitting-room of a third class Broadway hotel. 
There are very green people around everywhere, and this stranger 
was one of them, for he, already not quite sober, allowed his new-- 
found companion to treat him to further refreshments at the bar of 
the house. Then they went out together to see the city sights, and 
the las j thing complainant remembers of the little spree is that he 
woke up somewhere next morning minus four thousand dollars in 
bonds and greenbacks, his gold watch, and some articles of jewelry 
that weie upon his person. He says that the prisoner drugged him, 
and that he was still partially conscious when his pockets were 
rifled. Prisoner is committed to the cells for to-night, to-morrow 
morning to be taken before the magistrate at one of the Police 
Courts. The detective knows him, and tells us what manner of ras- 
cal he is. To the " profession" and the police he is known as a 
" mean thief ;" generally, he manages to get lodgings in the house 
of some widow woman, on whom he can readily impose 5 he intro- 
duces comrades in rascality there, until a portion of the house be- 
comes a rookery of thieves. Their depredations are, for_ the most 
part, carried on outside, though a branch of their operations is to 
volunteer attending to the hall-door, by wbich means they get pos- 
session of money-letters and parcels addressed to respectable per- 
sons occupying the best rooms in the house. But what chiefly 
marks the"" mean thief 7 as such is, that he is capable of defrauding 
and swindling his brother operators. The comrades, or " pals," se- 
lected by him are usually young and somewhat inexperienced hands. 
He persuades them to let him retain their share of an " operation," 
in order that he mayinvost it to their advantage 5 then he banks the 
funds on his own account, and when any of the others come down 
upon him for their plunder, he declares himself " dead broke," and 
swears that he doesn't know how he spent the money, but. anyhow, 
hain't a cent of it left. In this way, many a « mean thief" has man- 
aged to lay up a considerable sum of money, though he generally 
gets rid of it as easily as he made it— by gambling, or in some 
equally popular and fashionable way. The < ; mean thief" is an in- 
dividual only, the class to which he belongs being most often that 
to which the " hotel thief" gives a denomination. New York fairly 
swarms with such rascals as these, and it would take more than 
double the number of detectives now in the force to keep a check 
upon their mysterious and widely ramified operations. 

ftow a gentleman enters with a very small complaint ; he lives 



38 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

but a few Mocks away, and, as he was stepping over his threshold, 
found lying upon the steps a man either dead, or so drunk as to be 
entirely unconscious. Wasn't there a patrolman about, :he sergeant 
on duty asks, to whom the gentleman could have applied for the re- 
moval of the body, dead or alive ? " Not a patrolman to be seen." 
replied the gentleman : " waited ten minutes, and tien came around 
to the station-house for help." A roundsman is sent out to look 
after the nuisance, and we join the party to learn the manner of pro- 
ceeding in a case of the kind. When we arrive at where the body 
lies, across the steps of a hall-door, the roundsman gives a certain 
number of raps with his " locust" upon the sidewalk flags. This 
very soon brings a patrolman to the spot, to whom some objurga- 
tory observations are addressed by the roundsman. Patrolman ex- 
postulates by demanding to know whether he is supposed to be a 
bird, and capable, in that character, of occupying two places at 
once. Now the roundsman examines the body, turning it over on 
its back, so that the neighboring gas-lamps shed a ray upon the face. 
Body grunts under the operation ; roundsman shakes body, saying, 
" nary a dead there, bnt drunk as h-11 ; guess I'll wake him up !" 
With that he takes his locust and applies it briskly, in the manner 
of the bastinado, to the soles of the sleeper's feet. The effect is 
electrical ; the sleeper starts into a recumbent position, and says, 
" le' me 'lone." The officers lift him up between them— he is a big 
returned soldier, " on a drunk" — and bear him to the station-house, 
where he is placed in the drunkard's place of detention for the 
night. Early in the morning he will be up, with several other 
11 hard cases," before the magistrate at the Jefferson Market Police 
Court ; there he will be lightly dealt with, partly because he is one 
of the country's defenders, and possibly because he has already suf- 
fered the loss of his pocket-book, containing the arrears of his pay, 
which was " hooked" from him by some small thief, as he lay upon 
the door-steps in his drunken sleep, dreaming, it may be, of his de- 
cent, respectable home among the far-away New Hampshire hills. 

We go, you and I together, you know, to another up-town station- 
house, much resembling, in its leading features, the last. The jeal- 
ous eye of the green lantern is there, and inside we find the bright 
oaken panels and the green iron railing, and the sergeant on duty, 
taciturn and severe. There is something going on here, but before 
we can ascertain what the case is, a great shuffling of feet is heard 
upon the steps without, and three officers enter, bearing the body of 
a well-dressed man — a body dressed in the height of the fashion, 
indeed — a body in an elegantly-cut black walking-coat, trousers of 
the most fashionable pearly-grey stuff, with waistcoat to match — a 
body of which the linen is the finest and most expensive that Broad- 
way can furnish from its stores — a body with a thousand dollars 
worth of rings upon the fingers of the dead hands belonging to it, 
and with a diamond brooch glittering upon its broad and deep 
chest — a body of which the face is dark purple — nearly as dark a 
purple as the dyed beard with which the dropped chin is fringed — 
a body to which, a few minutes ago, belonged the accessories now 
carried alongside of it by one of the officers — the fashionable white 
felt hat with a black band upon it, and the heavy, gold-mounted 
Malacca cane. To many who stroll Broadway that body, when in 



THE STATION HOUSES. 39 

the life, was familiar, constantly, during the afternoon hours, to be 
seen standing, like a show-figure, at some corner, or, more often, 
upon the door-steps of some hotel. A cou le of well-known Broad- 
way "faro bankers" follow the procession, for the body was one of 
their erafc, and was found dead, just now, of apoplexy, in the door- 
way leading to the " hell " There is a place here, in which the 
body will be laid away for the night ; to-morrow, the coroner will 
hold an inquest upon it, and the next day it will be dressed up in 
another expensive suit of clothes, minus the jewelry, and the hat. 
and the Malacca cane, and put away, by the " faro bankers,' 7 into 
the earth. 

And while we are waiting here — you and I together — for some- 
thing else to turn up, dead or alive, I will recount how, one Sunday 
night, long ago, I saw, in one of these up-towu station-houses, a 
scene that occurs to me just now. An officer came in, having in 
custody a very respectable-looking man, who seemed somewhat flur- 
ried and indignant at the position in which he found himself. There 
was a large following of well-dressed young men — Germans, for 
the most part — the accused party being the keeper of a well-known 
German restaurant, and a popular host among his numerous cus- 
tomers. It was a time when spasmodic efforts were being made by 
the police to suppress the concert saloon nuisance, and the sale of 
spirituous liquors, on Sunday, was prohibited with blue-law zeal. 
And so, on that Sunday evening, the satellite of the law undertook 
to make a descent upon " mine host" of the restaurant, and investi- 
gate keenly the liquor then and there standing before the customers 
of the house. It was mostly lager bier and Rhenish wine that ap- 
pealed to the senses of the officers, who tasted as they went — in 
some instances taking a pretty good pull at the tipple, too. At last 
they found that of which they were in search — a tumbler that had 
stood before a departed guest, and that tumbler was found to have 
contained — rum. The landlord had but short shrift accorded to 
him — hardly time, indeed, to don his coat — and hatless, if I remem- 
ber rightly, he went. The excitement about this capture was in- 
tense, the indignation both loud and deep. Every customer who 
happened to be in the place rallied round the landlord, and sup- 
ported him, while the night-officer recorded in the great book his 
name, occupation and crime. Any amount of bail was offered for 
him on the spot, but the night-officer was inexorable. " None could 
get him out before the morning," said he, "excepting the City Judge." 
Off a couple of the customers started for the residence of that offi- 
cial, but they returned, after a long absence, only to say that he 
could not be found ; and so " mine host" had his lodging in the 
cell for the rest of the night. They led him to his " vile dungeon," 
and laid him upon his " mouldy straw," and in the morning, the 
magistrate at the neighboring Police Court disposed of the case 
summarily, by sending the worthy vintner back to his wine-casks. 
And so ended a capital illustration of the virtue of sumptuary laws 
— injunction so savory to the nostrils of those who would 

" Hang a cat on a A'onday 
For killing a mouse of a Sunday." 

But here we have another, and a far more gorgeous tableau, in 



40 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

one of these elegant station-houses at the dead hour of the night. 
Three or four carriages come rattling over the pavement, and pull 
up in the glare of the green lantern. There is a great bustle with- 
out — a nutter, so to speak, as of the unpacking of damaged goods. 
Now a sweep and rustle of skirts on the station-house steps ; the 
doors are thrown open to their utmost yawn, for there is unlimited 
crinoline on the threshold, and in there flaunts, now, a portly dame, 
the ruby ripeness of whose face proclaims that if she has not lived 
wisely, yet she has lived uncommonly well. She is attended by a 
dozen or so of sylph-like creatures, whom the officers in escort con- 
siderately speak of as the " young lady boarders" of the establish- 
ment over which the rubescent matron presides. Most of them are 
very pretty, and one or two of them really beautiful — " young and 
so fair." Irreverently the policeman to whom we address ourselves 
for information, tells us that a midnight descent has just been made 
upon a '.' moll crib," as he calls the " boarding house" of the portly 
dime, and that we see before us the net proceeds of the '"'haul." 
Observe the self-possessed manner of nearly every one of the bevy 
under what might naturally be considered trying circumstances 
for " young lady boarders" of such ethereal fibre. In the bustle 
caused by their arrival a drunken sailor, who had been brought in 
by a patrolman, is left to himself for a moment, and, pitching for- 
ward, he strikes his head against a door-jamb with violence, and 
falls senseless to the floor, where he lies prostrate— a ghastly object, 
bleeding from the nose and mouth. Do the sylphs scream and faint 
away, as the tragic spectacle is unfolded to their eyes ? Not a bit 
of it ; they gather up their skirts, though, so as to avoid imbruing 
them in the gore, and, with a graceful sweep, each one of them flle3 
past poor Jack on the floor, without so much as a change of color. 
Indeed, a change of color would involve, for most of them, a 
tedious chemical process, on account of the " kalsomining" by which, 
alone, a blush can now be brought to their cheeks. "We scan the 
features of the rubescent queen of the sylphs, and wonder where 
we have seen her before. Now we have it. Often of a fine after- 
noon in Central Park, when the Drive is all a-whirl with the gay 
equipages of the Upper Ten and the Shoddy Twenty, there may be 
seen in the line a carriage of the heavy " drag" build, drawn by a 
pair of stately brown horses, with silver-mounted harness, and white 
fly-nets to keep the teasers from tickling their well-tended cuticles. 
Coachey on the box is absolutely a sight to see. Either he is an 
English nobleman in disguise, doing the thing for a heavy bet — ac- 
cording to the usage of English noblemen ever since the days of 
the Regency — or else he has been coachman to an English noble- 
man, for he handles his ribbons with a felicity which none but a 
first-rate artist could achieve. He is able-bodied, and of a tempe- 
rament most florid to behold. The trimness of his triangular grey 
whisker is a study for the artist in hair. He is clothed in a plum- 
colored livery, with large silvered buttons cropping out upon it in 
reckless profusion, and to one side of his hat is affixed the aristo- 
cratic " cockade." Quite a holiday coachman is he, and meet to 
drive gingerly over pavements the sprightly wedding guests. In- 
stead of which he goes driving for an " establishment" where ma- 
trimony is an unrecognized responsibility, and the wedding-ring 



THE STATION HOUSES. 41 

scoffed at as a symbol of nought. Betweon the wheels of this coui- 
pago trot a couple of well-trauied coach-dogs. They are spotted 
creature.?, bo it observed, and so in harmony with the character of 
the establishment, to which nothing that is spotless can ever proper- 
ly belong. And, reclining upon tha well-cushioned seats of this 
luxurious carriage, you shall behold on those bright afternoons the 
portly dame who is here to-night on the charge of keeping a disor- 
derly house. She did not come hero in her own carriage an-3 
coachey is now probably availing himself of circumstances at t! 
" establishment," and pitching into the seven-dollar ohampa 
For to-night the queen of the sylphs and her " young lady be 
ers" must lodge along with plebeian street cyprians in the station- 
house ceils. To-morrow it is hard to say what will become of her. 



or how the thing is managed ; but you may bet on seeing her any 
day next week rolling in sfcatelmess along the Drive in the Park. 




you shall read 

in the papers of a fresh descent upon her establishment, and a re- 
vival of the same little domestic drama in one act. It is a real 
wonder how ail this is done — but done it is, beyond the shadow of 
a doubt. 

Sometimes the station-house at night is the scene of tribulation 
brought upon ladies not exactly of the cyprian stripe, but whose 
fast manners and free living entitle them to be considered leading 
members of the demi-monde. These ladies live, for the most part, 
at hotels, where they occupy handsome apartments, and, having 
plenty of money, are free to the best of every thing the house af- 
fords. A descent may some night bo made upon an aristocratic 
gaming-house, in a fashionable quarter of the town. The imple- 
ments are confiscated ; there is a general sequestration of the " chips" 
and other effects. The dealers, and some twenty players, are taken 
into custody, and marched off to the station-house for the night. 
Among the captives note a very pretty young fellow, with curly, 
auburn hair, and a complexion as fair as a woman's. Short of star 
ture, but graceful, he is dressed in the height of the fashion, and his 
hat sits jauntily on his crisp curls in a way that is very bewitching 
to see. He is the most nonchalant of the group, and puffs his segar 
defiantly under the very nose of the night officer, when the station- 
house is reached. All the delinquents are committed for the night, 
to be discharged with an admonition in the morning, when brought 
before the sitting magistrate at such and such a police court. But 
the gay young fellow with the yellow curls does not long occupy 
the cell to which he has been consigned. Somehow a message has 
been conveyed by him to somebody. There must be spirits around. 
Somebody is here in a trice, and there is an open sesame for the boy 
with the golden head — or shall we say with the golden hand? Ob- 
serve narrowly his figure as he goes leisurely away with the friend 
who has called for him. It is very feminine in its contour — espe- 
cially about the bust. Well, that is no business of ours. Mrs. 

is said to be a very fascinating person, and her influence in certain 
quarters is unbounded. Sometimes she unsexes herself for a frolic 
in paletot and peg-tops ; and if she does, how much worse is she, 



42 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

pray, than the Lady Godiva, who cantered through Coventry in a 
closer costume than that, to the delight, though subsequent grief, of 
Peeping Tom ! 

In the lower wards of the city it is hard times for the patrolman 
at night. Loiter in the light of some green lantern that winks its 
jealous eye upon a groggery or pawnbroker's den, and is reflected 
tar down by the inky pool that stagnates under the very noses of 
the satellites of the law. Light your segar, and loiter here, a little, 
to see who comes along. Yonder, in the dark, there is a scuffle, an 
exchange of blows, and of language such as masters of deportment 
do not usually inculcate upon youthful gentility. Somebody has 
got. the better of somebody else, at least, and here now they come — 
a patrolman still struggling with a badly-beaten rough, whose head 
he has been obliged to club in order to reduce him to submission. 
They tumble into the station-house in a very exhausted condition, 
the patrolman bleeding profusely from the face. Indeed he nearly 
faints away from loss of blood, and, on examination, it is found that 
his nose has been nearly bitten off by the beast with whom he was 
in conflict. The surgeon of the precinct is sent for in haste. Luck- 
ily he is on hand, and the unfortunate patrolman's nose, which re- 
mains attached to his face by only one frail corner of skin, is skill- 
fully sewn on by him to its place, in time, it is hoped, to save dis- 
figurement for life. It is a pity that the crime of mayhem, as this 
biting and maiming business is termed, is not liable to extreme rigor 
of law. Six months' imprisonment, we believe, with some paltry 
and insignificant fine, is the highest punishment a court has it in its 
power to impose. 

Here, as we watch in a station-house on the west side, there is a 
great excitement, and a notorious pugilist, a man of herculean frame 
and fine proportions, is brought in by a posse of policemen. He is 
drunk, and his language is blasphemous and obscene. He may be 
an alderman, yet. After him is borne the bleeding body of his vic- 
tim — the patrolman who undertook to arrest him, and whom he — 
brave pugilist! — shot with a revolver in a cowardly spasm of mis- 
trust of his own fistic skill. The patrolman is not dead, indeed, and 
he ultimately recovers, but has had a " hard scratch" for his life. 
Sing Sing subsequently receives the pistol-pugilist for a term of four 
years. Perhaps he has underground influence, though, and will be 
' ; pardoned out" at the expiration of two. Then he will be a made 
man for life. His " crib" will be the resort of admiring members 
of the " fancy." The " sports" will crown him with the glossiest of 
laurels. By and by he will be matched, probably, to fight some 
noted champion of the ring, and will make a great splurge about it 
at first ; but finally he will back down, on the objection that pistols 
are not in accordance with the rules of the " London P. R." 

It is no uncommon thing for a patrolman to be brought into the 
station-house of his precinct at night, suffering from some severe 
contusions or fractures of head or limbs. He has been attempting 
to make an arrest of some burglar or rowdy on his beat, and has 
been set upon by the gang. Slung-shot and sand-clubs are the 
weapons mostly in vogue with this class of miscreants, and they 
have been trying them on this luckless patrolman's head. The 
sand-club is a new and fearful weapon, lately introduced into this 



THE STATION HOUSES. 43 

country by the English " ticket-of-leave men" who settle down in 
our midst. It consists of a long, narrow tube of canvas, tightly 
crammed with sand. With this a skilful operator will tap an unsus- 
pecting person on the crown of the head with sufficient force to pro- 
duce immediate insensibility, or even deatb, and without leaving 
much external mark to betray how the injury was inflicted. In 
cases where an officer has thus been set upon, it is rare, indeed, that 
any arrests are ever made. The officer is engaged with his prisoner, 
and the attack is so sudden that he is knocked senseless before he 
has time to take observation of his assailants. 

Strange revelations of Broadway are sometimes developed in the 
station-houses at night. There are places on Broadway tbat are lit- 
tle dreamed of by the fashionable Jl Incurs who pace it to and fro 
when it is all a tulip-bed of gay colors on a fine afternoon. There 
are " cribs" on fashionable Broadway just as there are in Broome 
or Houston streets. Here, on a charge of keeping a disorderly 
house — " a resort for tipplers, thieves, prostitutes, and other aban- 
doned and dissolute characters" — comes a fellow well known among 
the Broadway " sports." His house is in a central and conspicuous 
part of the great thoroughfare. On the ground floor there is a large 
concert saloon, where " pretty waiter girls" do the honors of the es- 
tablishment to the frequent comers. Rows are constantly occurring 
there long after quiet people have gone away into their first sleep 
of the night. It is three o'clock in the morning, now, and there has 
just been a desperate fight in the place. '1 he police have been down 
upon it, and have brought in the proprietor and one of his " pals." 
To-morrow they will be liberated on bail. Plenty of '' influential" 
citizens will be found to go a 1500 for them on that. It was in this 
house that, not long since, a prize-fight took place in the open day 
— a regular ring business with stakes and ropes, and all that. The 
police had information of it, and broke in, but there were no arrests 
made, the principals and spectators all making their escape by get- 
ting through windows on to the roof of the adjoining houses and so 
clear away. And, at the present writing, the establishment is in the 
fullest of bloom, with its waiter-girls, and gaming-tables, and bad 
liquors, and pickpockets and all. 

The station-houses at night afford but too many illustrations of the 
freedom with which the knife is resorted to by the dangerous cha- 
racters who haunt every part of the city under cover of dusk. The 
" cutlery" is always on hand, and not a night passes but bright 
blades reek with human blood. Here we are in a station-house not 
far from Central Park, and a strong posse of police have iust 
brought in no fewer than twelve roughs who were engaged in a 
stabbing affray that occurred an hour ago. The scene of the trage- 
dy was a porter-house, the proprietor of which is in custody among 
the twelve. Gambling was the origin of the affair. It is not to be 
imagined that a porter-house is a place in which no drink is to be 
had for the money except the mild malt beverage from which the 
designation of such places is taken. The worst of bad whiskey and 
vile rum is the regular tipple in these resorts. Full of such stimu- 
lants, these gorillas quarrelled over their greasv cards, and the 
" cutlery" came into play very promiscuously. Some one of the 
party fought with a large dirk-knife, the blade of which was driven 



44 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

with such force into the forehead of another as to penetrate the 
brain, from which injury death ensued in a few minutes. The par- 
ties all Irish — as is sometimes the case where there is a fight and a 
murder, and whiskey to command. 

Eut it is not with the Irish, probably, that the use of the knife as 
a weapon originated in this country — though they seem to take it 
very kindly, indeed. On the Continent of Europe, as is well known, 
the knife is the favorite weapon of the bravo and the brigand. Italy 
has her "cutlery" always ready for a stab under the filth rib. The 
Spaniard has his dirk somewhere about him, you may depend, and 
so has the wily Portuguese. Our domestic negro, here, makes free 
use of it in his noisy broils over the gaming-board ; and the queer, 
unclassified sailors belonging to ships in the port — be they Lascars, 
or what not — are ever experi with their u bleeders." Come to the 
notorious Cherry street quarter, where all such do mostly congre- 
gate at night. We shall wait but a short time in the station-house 
here, I promise you, before some swarthy fellow, with blood upon 
his hands, is hauled in by the police. Here come three — all Italians, 
apparently, and sailors, and one of them requires the offices of the 
police surgeon with speed, for he has been stabbed dangerously in 
the side. They fought in a Cherry street dance house, ail about a 
painted syren whose charms had fascinated all three, and one of 
them will be a corpse before the first ray of dawn struggles in at 
the hazy panes of the station-house windows. The other men are 
stabbed, also, and it 13 probable that they will be sent on board- - 
their respective ships in the morning, for they are all drunk and 
nobody can tell who struck the first blow. 

And in this same neighborhood, John Chinaman figures, not unfre- 
quently,in the station-houses at night. There is no more avaricious 
or money-grabbing man in the world than John Chinaman ; he 
worships his gains as he would one of his clay gods, and it is over 
his money that his quarrels most frequently take place. See, here 
are a brace of them just brought in, one of them dying from seve- 
ral stab-wounds indicted on him by the other. They are not pleas- 
ant men to look at, either of them, and would not be desirable com- 
panions to go up in a balloon with, if you had greenbacks for bal- 
last and a tendency to fall asleep. They have been fighting in their 
boarding-house — money the cause. The stabbed man offered to 
settle the matter in a face-to-face fhj,ht, but the other declined the 
wager of battle, and sat down in a chair. Soon after, his antagonist 
carac behind and pulled the chair from under him, whereupon the 
" cutlery" came into requisition, and John Chinaman, No. 1, was 
stabbed' to death. 

With all precaution, and the exercise of constant vigilance, it is 
impossible to prevent suicides from occasionally taking place in the 
station-house cells. Not long since, a fugitive from justice was ar- 
rested in this city, charged with taking the life of a woman with 
whom he had been living in Washington. He was locked up in one 
of the city station-houses for the night ; on handing his supper into 
him, care was taken not to furnish him with either knife or fork. 
Nevertheless, when morning came, he v^ as found lying dead on the 
floor of the cell, deluged in blood. He had broken a piece off the 
tin plate on which his supper was served, and, with the jagged 



THE STATION HOUSES. 45 

point of this, had opened the main artery of his left arm, and so 
cheated the law. 

Now and again, at night, the police make a raid upon the unfor- 
tunate cyprians who perambulr.-e the streets. The effort is usually 
spasmodic, and, of course, has no permanent effect upon the reduc- 
tion of the " social evil." On these occasions, every courtesan who 
stops to speak to a man in the street is arrested, and locked up in 
the Precinct station-house for the night. In these cases, suicides are 
not unfrequent occurrences 5 they are generally effected by strang- 
ling. You remember how " unfortunate Miss Bailey," in the ballad, 
" hung herself, one morning, in her garters." The tragedy is often 
realized in the lone cell, at night. Some necessary projection, cr 
bar, affords a point of resistance, and " another unfortunate'' makes 
away with her miserable existence, by means of the impromptu 
bow-string immortalized by the balladlst of the poor Bailey girl. 

Among the strange contrasts often presented by the station-houses 
at night, we should not forget to mention the lost children. Here 
comes a stalwart policeman, leading by the hand a little one, whose 
terror is too deep for tears, or, rather, the little cherub has pumped 
the lachrymals dry, already, and there are no more tears ready for 
distribution yet. It was found toddling round in circles in Wash- 
ington Park, hours after it should have been in bed, and dreaming 
of Santa Glaus. Not a word can be had from it as to residence, but 
it admits that its name is " Melie," and expresses a desire to " go to 
mama." The little creature is comfortably dressed, and belongs, 
evidently, to a French mother, for, on being addressed in that lan- 
guage, it answered quite as readily as in English, though nothing 
further can be elicited from it. It is possible that it may have 
strayed away from home, but the police will tell you that desertions 
effected in this manner ore, by no means, of unusual occurrence. 
This small waif shall not be locked up in a cell like criminals, 
during the night ; it is ordered for transfer to the Police Head 
Quarters, in Mulberry street, where it will be taken motherly care 
of by the matron in charge of the department for lost children. 
The number of little ones thus taken in charge by the police, aver- 
ages four hundred per month. Besides these, there are foundlings, 
left in baskets upon door-steps, or found, swathed in rags, in a cor- 
ner of some vacant lot ; such are sent to the Institution of Charity 
and Correction, on Randall's Island, whither the stray ones are also 
transferred, unless claimed within a reasonable time. The quarters 
prepared for the reception of these stray lambs in the great Mul- 
berry street building, arc fitted up with every regard to their corn- 
fort, and here it is not unusual to find children who have, by some 
accident, strayed away from parents of affluence and position. The 
police records show that, for the year ending with October, 18GI, no 
less than 10,000 lost children were brought in, and disposed of at 
Head Quarters and the several precincts — 6,281 of them being males, 
and 3,759 females. This figure includes those that were claimed and 
taken away by their parents during the night. 



46 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE TOMBS ON SUNDAY MORNING. 

All New York has had a peep at that dismal, gloomy pile of 
granite, called the Tombs. Its cheerless Egyptian style of archi- 
tecture, its uninviting locality, combine to make its effect on the 
passer-by anything but agreeable — a dreaded abode of stern, re- 
morseless justice. 

The gaslights streaming up the hill of Elm street, like lines of 
golden bees — to borrow a simile from Shelly — are growing fainter 
and fainter in the dawn of this frosty December morn. A grey mist 
still broods in the atmosphere, and the shadows around this big, 
square pile of granite are melting ; but it will smile not, even in 
the rosy dawn. Save the tinkling of a distant car bell, the world 
around is as quiet as a church-yard ; not a pedestrian to be seen, 
not a even vagrant dog or a skulking cat gives life to the deserted 
quarter. The groggeries festering in its proximity are barred up, and 
their inmates are snoring off their drunken stupors. Through the 
open iron gate, up its many cold, slippery steps past its ponderous 
pillars, and we are in a dark, cavernous porch. Now to this door 
to the left, on the threshold of which we meet a group of sleepy 
Metropolitans, and we enter the Justice's court. It is not a large 
room, but its calling is lofty, and great deep windows gash its sides. 
The floor pitches towards a railed enclosure, within which, on an 
elevation, sits the Judge, the clerk, and their assistants. Wooden 
seats, divided by a centre aisle, face this forum. The railed enclo- 
sure runs along the front of the Justices' desks, and leads to a door 
at the end, the entrance from the prison. Beside this door is an- 
other, that of the examination room. A little gate, guarded by a 
squad of policemen, opens into the aisle and gives exit to the fortu- 
nate. The seats are well filled with a gathering of old women, 
sympathetic brothers and sisters, a few idle spectators, flashy roughs, 
and a politician or two, eager to reap a batch of votes by proffer- 
ing bail. Some of the old women are snivelling, some of the men 
are talking in bated breath, and the roughs to a man are squirting 
tobacco furiously. 

The presiding Judge is a type of Shakespeare's Justice — " belly 
with goodly capon lined." The moving human panorama of vice, 
vagrancy and want daily revolving before his eyes, is not reflected 
the least in his jovial face. Stern, unflinching justice may be his 
attribute, yet he reveals it not in a line or furrow. Well dressc-Vl, 
up to the prevailing style, his pendant whiskers trimmed to a nicity, 
he lolls in his awful seat a perfect specimen of a bonhommie. You 
would think a pitiful tale or an extenuated wrong would move so 
much geniality from its harsh duty. Not so ; Judge Hogan knows 
too well that the law is not a sentiment. He is in the flood-tide of 
the business of the day. Saturday night, of all nights of the week, 
reaps a fall harvest of' criminals. Much of the weekly wages of 
the working class are sure to flow into the rumseller's till, and their 
fiery draughts in turn send many of the poor fellows into the hands 



THE TOMBS ON SUNDAY MORNING. 41 

of the police. On the heels of a holiday the young " bloods" about 
town always sport through the city with a greater zest, looking forward 
to the quiet of a Sunday to sleep off their orgies and cool their fe- 
vered blood. There is no lagging in the work of this Sunday morn- 
ing court — fines are levied, innocents discharged, and evil-doers 
committed with a commendable activity, and the judicial function- 
aries seldom miss their breakfast. 

But let us detail some of the scenes shifting before us. Some are 
amusing, and awake a hearty laugh in the sombre hall. Many are 
moving, and do not fail to cause a throb of sympathy in the heart ot 
the most satiated observer ; but the more are of a character that 
carry disgust to the very soul, and you shudder at the depths into 
which humanity can fall. 

Bridget, a stalwarth Amazon of the Milesian persuasion, had appro- 
priated the head-gear of a fellow female lodger, so the latter lady 
swears. The head-gear, which may be mistaken for any old house- 
keeper's mop, is displayed in court. 

" Indeed I payed seven shillins for it, Judge, and if the gentleman 
with the big brass buttons will jist step around the corner to the 
lady's what keeps a thread and needle like store, she'll be apt to 
swear the same as meself. Shure, it's not the like of me that would 
wear the koveriu of such a lively head as the top piece of that im- 
pudent hussy," pointing to complaining lodger, who happened to 
be at that instant irritating her scalp. 

" Silence !" said the Judge, or some one whose duty it was to im- 
pose it. 

The little half-born titter in the court is quickly strangled. 
Bridget thought her wit had gained her a point, but the straight- 
forward story of the lodger and her witness deprived Eiddy of all 
title to the old head-gear, and by way of solace, the Judge proffered 
her a rural excursion to that " gay and festive" isle at the foot of 
Fifty-second street, East River. As she was escorted back to the 
prison by a gentlemanly M. P., she shotted her tongue with the 
vilest of all vocal volleys. It would have made the traditions of 
Billingsgate blush. 

A brutal, sivage, rum-eaten creature, squalidly clothed, the 
haunting carcase of a Cherry street cellar, now stands at the bar. 
A feeble, haggard woman, soon to be a mother, as filthily clothed, 
her eyes blackened, an angry flush on her forehead, moans oat her 
piteous wail against the brutality of her lord and master. They 
go fearful lengths in their hells of cruelty, these poor Irish females, 
before they lift up their voices at a justice bar for a drop of ame- 
lioration. The doings of a Cenci pale before the record of this 
brute's fiendish acts. What a relief to think that this ferocious an- 
imal is to be caged for awhile ; and you think that this poor female 
has got rid of her trials. Bah ! These blue-coated metropolitans 
will tell you, when that ugly wound heals, and a few weeks roll 
around, that she will moan^ over the step she has taken, and that 
this very author of her woes will be welcomed from exile with joy. 

And what has brought this nice young man into the caravan ? 

16 Well, Judge, I did get a little high— drank a little too much 
« Madam Cliquot' in the back parlor ; got a little jealous. Wine and 
women, you know — smashed a mirror or two — mussed up things 



48 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK.' 

generally ; went out on the sidewalk to cool off— up set a row of 
ash barrels — pulled a little Dutchman's nose — rang a few door- 
bells — stuck a barber's pole into a confectioner's shop — (Judge: 
u Rather a big stick of candy,") then topped off by upsetting police- 
man No. — , the devil knows what his number was, I can't remem- 
ber—'' 

"Tut! tut! my healthy boy, I know exactly how to make up 
your little bill ; be careiul how you come this way again, young 
sport. You'll have something to remember me by besides a fine.'' 

Then there was a squad of bloated drank ards reeking with foul 
gin. A quartette of courtezans, their painted faces ghastly in the 
morning light, their dishevelled locks, their torn finery parodying 
beauty, sickening. the very soul — and preaching purity and morali- 
ty from the very contrast. Thieves, pickpockets, swindlers, follow 
them. Now it is a poor pale-faced little fellow — an Oliver Twist — 
the pupil of some Artful Dodger. He has a little blue bundle un- 
der his arm, and has passed a sleepless night with vagrants around 
him. They are audible, the sobs of his poor mother weeping on the 
wooden bench ; his blue eyes swim with tears at the sight of her. 
Perhaps as they pass out of this sombre room, hand in hand, they 
will hear the sweet muuc of the church bells, and a good angel 
will ever guard from crime the soul of that poor, pale faced little 
fellow. 

The audience who sit in the Tombs court of a Sunday morning, 
listen to terrible sermons — sermons, the texts of which are the 
creation and the victims of vice. To turn now and then from 
pleasant scenes, and spend a short hour here, can alone inform you 
cf the horror, the brutality, the viciousness of a great city's out- 
casts. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE MARKETS AT NIGHT. 

Fulton Market, at night, presents a good many features character- 
istic of New York city and its motley population. Most of ihe 
night, as well as all day long, the narrow arcade running along the 
Fulton street front of this dingy old pile, is crowded with an ebb 
and flow of passengers on their way to and from the Brooklyn 
ferry-boats. Hundreds of these passengers thus take their way, 
night after night, without ever turning aside into the market alleys, 
to view their aspect alter the business hours of the day are over. 
Perhaps there is not much to be seen, after all, but let us take a 
turn through the place, and look about us a little 

You see those long basement places of entertainment that abut 
on the arcade, and in which, as wo pass, several marketmen in 
aprons, and other men, coatless, and |n red shirts, may be seen 
drinking at the bars. These places are never closed — at least the 
present writer has passed them, many and many a time, at all hours 
between just after dark and daylight, and their business, if slack, 
still always seemed to warrant the outlay necessary for a relay of 
night hands. The boats run all night, and there is alwavs a chance 



50 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

that some hungry or thirsty wayfarer on his way to or from them, 
will " stop in" at the basements, to fortify his " department of the in- 
terior." 

Dim lights, you may observe, are burning in the alley-ways of 
the market, giving a very ghostly appearance to the seene as you 
view it from a little distance. Shadowy butchers, or watchmen em- 
ployed by the butchers to look after their properly, are seen flitting 
slowly here and there among the rows of carcases with which the 
alley-ways are lined. Up to about ten o'clock, or thereabouts, some 
of the fruitwomen may still be seen sitting by their tables, but they 
will soon stow away their stock, now, and go home to count the 
gains made by them throughout the weary day. Pass this way, 
along the arcade that looks out toward the river. Two or three 
burly policemen, club in hand, are slowly pacing up and down, as 
you will observe, and their presence is very necessary, indeed, for 
there are no end of skulking places all around the market, and, 
even in broad day-light, many a watch or pocketbook is filched 
from the unwary passengers to and from Brooklyn. The great 
green-and-red " cross-town" cars take up their stand just at the foot 
of the market, where several stages are always in waiting, too. As 
you jostle in or out of these vehicles, look very sharply to your 
pockets for it is in these jostles that the light-fingered operator finds 
his opportunity 5 but the policeman who stands by the arcade post 
near by is all eyes for such. The cake-and-coffee shops along the 
river-frdiit arcade, are, as you see, still in full operation, and many, 
if not all of them, remain so throughout the night. Queer little sa- 
loons they are, something like ship's galleys. The proprietors 
wear a very tidy appearance, with clean white aprons and a rather 
professional air. All the utensils are as bright as silver. The 
" spread" along the front counter is a tempting one to the appetites 
of those who indulge in pastry, though you and I, perhaps, might 
discern dyspepsia lurking behind the dainty show. There are pies, 
there, of many a mysterious combination. Some of them present 
obvious indications of treacle and dough, and if you watch the 
stray passengers who come along, you will see that five out of six 
of them select that sort of pastry for immediate consumption. Cer- 
tainly it seems very easy to bolt, and perhaps it is very filling at the 
price. The coffee is always kept very hot, here, and perhaps that 
is about the best that can be said of it, although it is no worse than 
that generally dealt out in the cheaper saloons about the city. Here 
and there, as you pass on toward the Beekman street front of the 
market, little oyster establishments are in full operation under the 
arcade. The glowing braziers look very comfortable this chilly 
night, and it is not easy to resist the urgent invitation of the artist 
who is engaged in frying scollops for a night customer, who sits 
inside the little stall. Shell-fish are shell-fish, now, all along o' the 
war, and that fry will be charged for at the rate of forty cents. 
Four years ago about half the money would have secured it. But 
the shell-fish in Fulton market are superb, and people, now-a.days, 
do not grumble much about prices. Eels get used to being skinned, 
we are told. 

Up to about twelve o'clock at night, the liveliest nook in Fulton 
market is Dorlon's — a place so well known to all house-keepers who 



THE MARKETS AT NIGHT. 51 

go marketing by day. Dorlon does a pretty good business at night, 
in the oyster supper way. Here, as we retrace our steps along the 
arcade, come some lively, bouncing girls with their beaux, all on 
their way home from New York, or perhaps, from church, but still 
more perhaps from the Brooklyn Academy, or theatre, or some 
other profane place of amusement in which that rather prim suburb 
is prone slyly to indulge. They enter Dorlon's, where already 
several voyagers of the raging ferry are seated at the small tables. 
If you delight in seeing the mysteries of shell-fish cookery, this is 
the place for you to feast your eyes. See how featly that slim 
youth with the check-sleeves and close-cropped hair tosses up a 
stew. The young gentleman who obligingly opens oysters is mas- 
ter of his profession. He is a graduate of Fulton market ; and, 
that giving him precedence, nothing more remains to be said. But 
prices rule too high here, yet, and if Libby, far up Fulton street, 
charges but twenty cents for a stew, we hardly see why the price of 
one in Fulton market should be kept up to twenty-five. But the 
connoisseur in oyster knows that the article is good, here. At some 
of the tables you will observe that solid, business-like men are hav- 
ing their oysters on the half-shell, accompanied by foaming " tobies" 
of nut-brown ale. These are probably residents of Brooklyn, 
whose business lies in New York, and keeps them in the city until 
the night is well advanced, and Dorlon's is their favorite place of 
stopping in on their way to the ferry. 

As the night advances, the place grows dimmer and dimmer, and 
even the stalls and cellar-places are all shut up except the few that 
keep astir the night through. Passing away from the market, you 
will catch, even more than by day, the reeking exhalations that 
arise from the heaps of oyster-shells and garbage with which the 
gutters are dammed. There seems to be no drainage here. Pools 
of stagnant water collect at the lower corners of the arcades ; and 
just when the thoroughfare is most crowded, close by the ferry- 
gates, filth and miasma seem to be the general characteristics of 
the scene. 

But what is to be said of Washington market, if that of Fulton 
seethes thus over a caldron of filth ? Turn down Vesey street with 
this writer, and take a nocturnal glance at the terrible old huddle 
of abomination, and purulence, and slime. The only reputation for 
decency that Washington market enjoys is based upon the quality 
of the food sold in it, which is excellent. The surroundings of the 
place are execrable. It is notorious for the bold operations of the 
thieves who haunt it through the crowding day. There is but one 
comforting suggestion arising out of the dirty old pile, as you con- 
template it. If it isn't pulled down soon, it will tumble to pieces 
of itself. It will take a thousand tons of chloride of calcium to 
purify the site where it stands when it i3 gone. Let some enter- 
prising glover contract for the removal of the rats that will be sa- 
crificed when the dilapidation of Washington market takes place. 
Their skins will be a fortune to him for the manufacture of genuine 
gants Jouvin, or of real Alexandre kid gloves, imported direct from 
Paris. 

Now, as we view the ricketty concern at night, there is but little 
to catch the eye, though a great deal to catch the nose. There is 



52 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

no great ferry thoroughfare by it, as by Fulton market, and its 
places of entertainment, consequently, are closed. The filthy stalls 
that stick out like brown wens from the sides of the building loom 
hazily now, for the streets here are very indifferently lighted. At 
the western end of it, right over on the river pier, there, you see 
there is a very largo show of meat, the well-dressed carcases hang- 
ing out in long rows open to the street, and forming a ruddy back- 
ground to the horse-cars that continually pass and repass. But moat 
can hardly be called a sign of life, and the whole place has a de- 
solate and deserted look. All the little penny-dealers have put 
their tables away for the night. Those large, dirty chests that lum- 
ber up the street close under the market stalls, are where the small 
dealers put away their goods and chattels until the dawn of another 
day. One hopeful old man, with cheap segars to sell — and vile 
ones " at that"— still sits at his crippled table, dozing under a feeble 
ray of gas-light. There is a man at work whitewashing some of 
the stalls — a little job that must be done either at night or on Sun- 
days, no matter which. See how the posts that support the dilapi- 
dated roof of the alleyway arc nearly worn through by the action 
of the halters of wagon-horses that are tethered to them during the 
day. It would not take a Sampson to pull down this edifice by 
straining on the pillars ! 

The places of entertainment that bound the market on three side3 
do not seem to have much call at night. Some of them have long 
dining-rooms, with bars 5 and bowling-alleys and billiard-rooms are 
attached to a few. But they are very dreary at night, for the spot 
is not a cheerful one, and but few care to linger in it after dark. 
Now and then there sallies forth from a drinking-saloon some 
belated m irket-gardener from New Jersey, who has got "pretty 
well on," and is only now getting into his wagon to drive back to 
his rustic homestead. Years ago we heard from an old customer of 
Washington Market a story of some such old farmer as you. He 
had been in town all day with his son, a young stripling of seven- 
teen years. Towards evening, soon after the market was lighted 
up, the old man got hustled in one of the passages by a ijnek of 
thieves. He had boon drinking a little, and his blood was up, and, 
being a powerful man, he made short work with those nearest to 
him, until the whole of the rascals took to their heels. Passing a 
corner soon after this, he came suddenly on one of the thieves, as 
he supposed, running along the sidewalk at a great pace. One of 
the large chests along the market wall happened to be open, and 
the old man, seizing up the fugitive as he brushed past him, crowded 
him quickly into this, and, having shut down the lid, and driving 
a chip through the staple to keep the hasp from slipping, walked 
away, chuckling at the successful trick played by him upon the 
rascally pickpocket. Now he gets his wagon out to start for home, 
but, on calling to his son, that youth was nowhere to be found. 
While the farmer was searching for him, in great tribulation, the 
row kicked up by the prisoner in the chest brought one of the 
market men to his rescue, and, lo ! who should he turn out to bo but 
the missing progeny of the oil farmer, who, blind with whiskey 
and rage, had failed to recogniz3 his offspring. But the worst of 
the joke was that the box happened to be half full of eggs, into 



THE MARKETS AT NIGHT. 53 

which one of the dealers hail stowed them a few minutes "before, 
leaving the lid up until he returned with another basket of them! 
The plight of the young man from the country may be easily 
imagined, and the old man's wallet was lightened, considerably, by 
the amount he had to pay for the broken eggs. 

The best time to see the markets to advantage, at night, is about 
Christmas and New Years. Then they are brilliantly lighted up, 
and dressed with evergreens, and numbers of people throng them 
for the sake of the show. The prize meat is decorated very fanci- 
fully, on these occasions, with rosettes and wreaths of flowers. 
Great Christmas wreaths, like horse-collars, are hung up alono- 
the stalls. The show of trussed turkeys, and other poultry, is 
creditable to a great city. Now and then some strange, excep- 
tional animal, of an edible nature, attracts the attention of the 
visitor. A large bear, scientifically laid open to display his internal 
wealth of fat, is no uncommon object in the markets at this season. 
Opossums, with very pig-like little faces, dangle from the stall 
beams by the tails, and squirrels of several varieties are tastefully 
festooned along wiJ.i snowy hares and grey rabbits. Here you may 
feast your eyes upon a noble wild turkey — a gobbler of thirty pounds 
weight, whose plumage gleams like armor in the gaslight, aud from 
whose breast depends a " brush," or lock of hair, six inches long. 
The time will soon come, it is to be feared, when that sort of game 
will be a rarity, indeed, in our markets, for the pot-hunters out 
West kill too many of them, and at wrong seasons. Fine fat bucks, 
from the northern counties of the State, with their hides and horns 
on, are always a conspicious feature about this festival time. The 
wild fowl from the Long Island shores are infinite in their variety, 
and, contrasted with the pile3 of winter vegetables, what capital 
subjects they afford for the painter of still life ! 

There is a smart trade in toys going on, during the holiday sea- 
son, in the principal markets, even to a late hour of the night. 
Loose-jointed negroes, or zouaves, set dancing by a simple contri- 
vance, seem to take very well with the agents of Santa Claus. 
Here you may see a girl standing with a bushel of toy watches, 
with chains, hanging upon her arm3 and neck. The literature of 
the market is also on show to a late hour during the festival nights, 
and the stalls setting forth all the latest sensation stories and cheap 
novelettes have a good time of it. There is a pretty good show, 
too, of plants in flower-pots, some of them in full bloom and of 
rare beauty, and bouquets are not wanting even at this advanced 
season of the year — and night. Fulton Market, especially, is worth 
a ramble through at night, by the country cousins who have con- 
cluded to eat their Christmas turkey in the city, just for the novelty 
of the thing. 

Of the city markets there is but one having any claim to solidity 
and appropriateness of architectural design, and that is the Tomp- 
kins Market. At night its features bear no very striking points, 
excepting the brilliant illumination of the whole of the upper 
story. That is the superb armory of the Seventh Regiment, but, as 
it has nothing particular to do with the subject of the markets at 
night, we shall here close our chapter, having discussed that topic 
at quite sufficient length. 



54 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW TORE. 

CHAPTER XI. 

WHERE GERMANS MOST DO CONGREGATE. 

New York has a community of eighty thousand natives of Ger- 
many. A foreign family large enough to stock three such cities as 
Frankfort. The wealth of these adopted citizens has been greatly 
and very recently augmented by the enormous consumption of besr 
— beer which they alone can manufacture to perfection — beer, the 
immense stock of which they alone could quaff up without any out- 
side help, at one sitting — beer which Americans are cultivating a 
decided taste for — beer which is usurping the crown of all Bourbon 
and King Apple Jack. Drinking beer, making beer, even thinking 
beer, one would think that the blood coursing through the arteries 
must be very " hoppy" indeed. Their breweries are in every ward. 
These castle3 of old Lager are as stupendous and massive a3 the tow- 
ers of their native Heidelburgh. What a marvel is the Lion Brew- 
ery ! Its vaults, its tanks, its lofts ! could the London docks rival 
it. Then the team3 that these large lords parade ! The finest horses 
in the world are harnessed to the chariots of this " Amber God!" 
How proud the step over the cobbles, these great, strong steeds, in 
all their trappings of brass and leather and bells — a wonderful sight 
truly, trucking their groaning load of damp, heavy oaken kegs. Yet 
has it not struck you that these very horses show in their proud step 
and foam white bits a world more interest in the beer business than 
those uncouth, blue-bloused, lethargic, heavy-faced, Dutch drivers, 
cracking lazy whips and smoking marvellous short pipes on the 
throne of kegs— perhaps if these animals drank beer they too would 
move as helpless as the old " bronze horse." Now according to the 
law of traffic, the demand should equal the supply. With a river of 
beer, ever flowing from these great fountains, what a stupendous 
absorption there must be somewhere. " Gad ! wherever two Dutch- 
men meet then comes the lager," George Chriity used to say— but 
when thousands of Dutchmen meet, as they do here on the east side 
of the town, who, outside of the family of the " lightning calculator," 
would be desirous of computing the quantity they could absorb ! 
Come with us then into one of the famous haunts of the lager swil- 
ling community, one of the big reservoirs of the " amber stream." 
The Atlantic Garden is rightly named, for the beer consumed there 
nightly is oceanic in its proportions. It is in the heart of the Bow- 
ery, the great German quarter, next door to the famous old theatre. 
Entering first the bar-room, a large, low ceiling, square room, with 
a bar on either hand, groaning with the weight of dripping kegs, 
piles of crystal glasses of all dimensions and variety ; loaded with 
sausages, those famous snake looking, American " Bolognas," with 
cakes and bread, brown and shiny, contorted and twisted, patted 
and moulded as only the German brain could devise ; green, fre.:h- 
looking salads dripping with oil, dimpled with red beets and scarlet 
turnips ; salads Offish, salads of meat, salads of herring, salads that 
the devil and Dr. Faustus only know the ingredients of; then there 
is a great box of segars, with a big frame of glass over them, like a 



WHERE GERMANS MOST DO CONGREGATE. 55 

hot-bod, and there in a hundred little partitions lie short and long 
segars, segars of the dimensions of a sausage and the puny propor- 
tions of a straw, some arc very black, some very light and some 
speckled like the skin of a mulatto 5 you can get some for a penny 
and some for ten times a penny, and* a few, a very few, believe us, 
that, are more than that. Purchasing one of the latter, of the black- 
eyed female attendant, who has a very Jewish cast of features and 
whose black eyes scan, very scrutinizingly, our proffered stamps — 
we do, as these Germans all do, envelop ourselves in smoke wreaths. 
The misty cloud is not too opaque to scan the going on of the tip- 
pling congregation. The bar-keepers are all fat. and very busy, 
their hair is cut very short, and they never receive an order or serve 
a glass of beer without screaming, in uncouth German, what sounds 
like "In-s-h," "Sw-y," &c. Light haired boys, with round, flushed 
faces, like bloated red cabbages ; hungry looking attendants, very 
bow-legged and swarthy, rush in and out, in a perpetual state of 
frenzy, screaming and sweating, with a pyramid cf glasses. Practice 
breeds perfection, see how adroitly they pack dozens of glasses in 
a pile that reaches to their very noses. You, a stranger to the beer 
gardens, would be astonished at the number of goblets these bust- 
ling waiters navigate with. It's a busy night and the wooden mal- 
let of the keg-tapper is ever echoing — crack ! crack ! crack ! there 
is a fresh keg broached — lets follow the wake of that waddling 
Dutchman, who is turning off a portion of its amber fluid — let us 
follow him to where the strains of that band emanate. Pas.-ing 
through a wide, open glass door, we behold a would-be enchanting 
garden. It is enclosed at the sides, and overhead a high vaulted 
roof shuts out the stars and night air — its walls are all painted with 
the good intentions of some sign board artist to portray a blooming 
garden scene — alas ! it's the portrayal of a dismal cemetery, and the 
tombs and grave stones are as natural as photographs of Greenwood 
or Cypress Hills — melancholy daubs of a peacock or two 'gives the 
idea of the conventional buzzards hovering over the pesty place of 
the dead. At the farther end of the garden is a raised platform, 
bordered with a dozen stunted and sickly dwarf trees, of some spe- 
cies unknown — to help out the conception of an earthly Eden. At 
the left is a big box on rafters, suspending aloft the musicians — on 
the right are boxes for shooting, with spring guns, the flaming 
bodies of ferocious Turks and Zouaves. The bow-legged genius, 
with his glassy hod of frothy beer, has rested his load on a black, 
greasy table, in the centre of the garden, and we hasten to make 
sure of a portion of his burden. The garden is very well stocked 
with bearded Germans, female Germans, youthful Germans, fat Ger- 
mans, thin Germans, and every description of the German. Their 
chattering and husky laughing is buzzing in every direction. You 
look about in vain for the face of a native, and you say, with Mr. 
Pottipher, " My God, even the little children talk Dutch." We said 
that there are present, females — they are not gaudily dressed nor 
painted — we will not doubt their virtue — yet we natives have a hor- 
ror of seeing women drinking at public gardens, and put them all 
in a certain class — not so here. These are wives and daughters — 
they are with their families, and foreign customs — the habits of their 
own land sanction their presence here. Yet the influence of Ame- 



56 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

rican society is being brought to bear upon tbe German ladies in 
onr midst — and the presence of females is not near as general as in 
tbe breweries and gartens of their native land. But don't look 
among them to find beautiful women — they are very plain featured, 
but they wear smiling faces that are in strong contrast wiih the 
heavy, uncxpressive features of their lords and masters. The ma- 
jority of Germans drink deep but very slow. They seldom get 
noisy or hilarious, but they are always boisterous and loud talkers 
— and gesticulation is their characteristic. See tbe contrast in tbe 
effect of the beer on that batch of American youths, tbe sole native 
representatives, besides ourselves, distinguishable in this vast crowd, 
and this solemn conclave of Germans, at our table. r lbe former 
gulp down their potations in a breath — the waiters are never idle 
serving them, they get redder and redder at each round of bier. 
Their hilarity is attracting the attention of tbe proprietor; they 
swear huge oaths and talk impertinently of those around them — 
then they are scuffling — now a pair of them roll under tbe table in 
a drunken wrestle — a score of glasses clatter and then crash upon 
tbe floor. Three lethargic Dutchmen, the police of the garden, get 
very red and hot as they rush the crew, by their coat collars, out 
into the street. But our neighbors! how philosophically, how calm- 
ly, they enjoy themselves. Their fuming cups are sipped, a slight 
draught, then, with a chorus of grunts, they rest them on the table 
and turn their heads around upon the ^ccne, like languid weather- 
cocks — a look at the music, a slow nod to a familiar face — ail to 
slow music, and then another sip. The music stops and they get 
gradually into a talk. They talk very thunderingiy, to be sure ; 
they swing their big fists like anvils — but this is exertion, and it is 
soon followed by a protracted rest — a rest during which the bier 
flows calmly, silently down — on and on, through the night's sitting, 
they drink and still sober, until, like tbe tortoise and the hare, they 
come out far ahead in the quantity, in their drinking race with those 
fast Gothamites who were hustled out just now, but to be hustled 
out of some other saloon or garden, until they stagger and reel into 
some haven of a station- bouse. 

We will not debate tbe question of the intoxicativo power of 1a- 
ger, but rest assured that it is impotent in the carcase of a Butch- 
man. The music is very good — we suppose even a German band 
could not tolerate bad music. An Alexandrian organ lends a 
pleasant accompaniment to the orchestra, who labored very indus- 
triously to while away with harmony the pause between drinks. 
The shooting boxes are largely patronized, and a source of wealth 
',o the proprietors .not to be sneezed at, Germans are generally 
good shots, but the uncertainty of the cumbersome spring guns 
" turn their science to wrath." There was one target very faintly 
drawn and marvelously small, to hit the bull's-eye of which causes 
a forfeit of twenty-five cents from the keeper of tbe pop-gun. Ono 
fellow, who hit it twice in succession, was told that a party was 
waiting for their chance, so he yielded up. Wasn't there just a lit- 
tle of the " Yank" in this ruse ? There are other places in this 
quarter very numerous indeed, where the German only can feel at 
home. Just across the street, a few doors below, they have a 
theatre, where every thing is German. It is nightly crowded with 



A FASIIIONABLE GAMBLING HOUSE. 5*1 

a large and appreciative audience who laugh, shed tears, and feel 
generally amused with a resort that takes them to the heart of their 
native fader-land. Here you'll see, nightly, wealthy German la- 
dies flashing their diamonds, and gazing through lorgnettes from ku 
luxurious a box as the West side theatres can boast. And here 
you'll see that marvel of curiosity, a pretty female German, in the 
person of a young and charming lady actress, "Frau"— ■ something 
outlandish. The character of the acting is more than or inary— 
no ranting or tearing Forrest or Eddy tramps the stage here. "To 
portray the pathetic seems the aim of its artists, and the perfor- 
mances of the troupe of the " Staats ; ' theatre, even to us, unac- 
quainted with their native tongue, carried pleasure to our heart. 
Here you find nice, black-eyed German girls, fair-featured, for they 
were certainly born beneath our genial skies, tending little booths 
stocked with dainty confectionery, or passing through the audience 
with well-loaded trays, meeting many customers, for combining re- 
freshments with amusement is chronic with foreigners. They sel- 
dom have rows in their German gatherings — a notable fact, which 
wo take a sincere pleasure in putting to their credit ; if a row 
occurs, you can, unhesitatingly, place it at the door-steps of some 
inebriated Gothamite. Pugnacity lies very deep in a German, and 
it takes a wonderful quantity of irritation and stirring up to bring 
it to the surface, but, when well aroused, it is so novel a sensation 
to himself, that it fairly bewitches him ; he strikes madly and wild- 
ly, seldom meting punishment on the head of the just offender, " or 
any other man." The mosj; ridiculous burlesque of a fight is gene- 
rally a Dutchman's row. Yet we won't question the laurels of the 
famous Garibaldi Guard, or the glory claimed by the Blencker Bri- 
gade ; but at stowing away a cask of lager, or at ferocious talking, 
without figh',wo give a hearty and unbegrudging verdict to the 
plaintive Dutchman. 



CHAPTER XH. 

A FASHIONABLE GAMBLING HOUSE. 

Gambli g is not, as yet, a fashionable vice in this country. No 
state legalizes it ; all clubs restrict it ; and any member of society 
who would dare introduce a " faro" table to vary the excitements of 
an evening's entertainments, would find his halls deserted and him- 
self ostracized. What may be the vogue at Paris is the horror of 
New York, and he who melts his gold at rouge et noir in Baden, 
with a thousand eyes upon him, would be execrated here. To say 
that such a one is a gambler, is to say all the bad that can be said 
of him ; every respectable man shuns him 5 no society would tole- 
rate him, and every office of trust and honor is barred against him. 
It's a curse that follows him, and he finds no associates save de- 
praved characters, and no resting-place save their secret haunts. 
Vv r e may thank the pure morality of our earlier times, and their still 
weakly-honored traditions, for this excellent fiat of society, for our 
stern ancestry were very fierce against the laxity of European soci- 



58 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW. YORK. 

ety, and were very determined that, in the New World, open gam- 
bling should not prevail. Is it not true that the stigma of Gambler 
is a terrible curse ? Take the political world, for example — thiev- 
ing, swindling, perjury and a hundred other crimes, are the legacies 
of almost each candidate, yet the people wink at all these enormi- 
ties as if they were chronic with political life, and vote them into 
office and out of office. And yet we are to hear of a notorious gam- 
bler bold enough to throw himself upon the suffrages of the people. 
Notwithstanding all we have said, gambling institutions flourish, and 
the wealth invested in them is estimated at a million of dollars 5 but 
they are all under the ban, and flourish, from week to week, liable, 
at any moment, to a visit from the police. 

One of the most fashionable of these establishments, to use a mis- 
nomer, is an imposing edifice within the shade of the Fifth avenue 
Hotel, and managed by a wealthy individual who essayed some 
years ago, to win the Champion Belt of America. He won a doubt- 
ful success — or at least a much disputed one in the ring, but, if for- 
tune was uncertain there she has since been his steady friend, and 
this ex-pugilist rolls in wealth, and can create the very devil among 
the Shylocks of the Stock Exchange, and fast bankers match their 
horses with him on the Harlem Lane, and swell the stakes of his own 
race-course during the Saratoga season. 

A very alert specimen of the sable race cautiously admits us into 
the frescoed hall, crossing which he bows us into a well-lighted and 
gorgeously decorated and furnished parlor. There is nothing in the 
furniture or decorations to make this room discernible from the 
drawing-room of a family mansion, unless it be that colors are more 
deeply contrasted, and show is more prominent than elegance. Per- 
haps some of the paintings are more voluptuous — the absence of 
drapery more general with the painted beauties — than people aro 
accustomed to, who don't know the story of the Cenci. A table, 
covered with fine damask, and loaded with the luxuries of a Roman 
banquet, is arranged at the upper end ; lights gleam upon the silver 
ware and crystal, and a pyramid of purple gra< es, juicy fruits, green 
leaves and flowers grace the centre. Attentive waiters serve you 
with dainty confectionery, solids, creams and game ; there is pale, 
golden sherry, and their stemmed glasses to sip it from ; brandy for 
heavy palates — " "Widow Cliquot" or ' : Eeidsick" — iced to perfec- 
tion, and served in elegant chased goblets. A sumptuous " free 
lunch" for all who wish to pay their respects to the " tiger. 55 This 
animal, with his gnawing fangs, has his cage in the further salon — 
a wide apartment, running the full width of the house, and opening 
out of the refreshment room. 

A " roulette" board and a " faro" table are the centres of attrac- 
tion. The " faro" dealer has the larger court 5 from its varied luck, 
it's the most favored game of the newly-fledged gambler. The 
dealer of this bank is a fine-looking, sharp-eyed fellow, with a 
neatly-trimmed moustache, and the air cf a self-possessed dandy. 
It was worth a critical survey — the dexterity with which he handled 
his " pictui's" — and his diamond ring was ever shooting a continu- 
ous ray of sparks. At his side sat the cashier, very busy in convert- 
ing greenbacks into " bones," and now and then reversing the order 
of things, to the pleasure of some fortunate winner. 



THIEVES, COUNTERFEITERS, ETC. 59 

The group clustering around the gaming table is composed of 
varied professions. The uniform ot the army was quite conspicu- 
ous — young officers and scarred veterans — reckless in play as at the 
battle front — true disciples of Mars — drygoods drummers, showing 
the sights to customers from the rural district:., s a ore big oaths, 
squirted tobacco juice furiously, and meekly lost the profits of their 
next day's bill of sale— young men venturing their first gold upon 
the card— looking very nervous, as if the apparition of defraudod 
employers haunted them — stung, perhaps, with remorse. Oh ! the 
empty till ! the false balance ! the forged name ! — these must be 
their resources on the morrow. Doctors, lawyers, merchants — no 
habitual haunters of these enticing rooms, but casual visitors, from 
the clubs where they have lost a little, now, hampered by no rules, 
let their passion have full sway. Playing deeper and deeper, their 
blood heated by the flowing wines, they'll let the night roll by be- 
fore they leave that fascinating board. Skulking around these, like 
foul birds on the battle-field, sneak the haggard, livid professionals, 
the same hang-dog faces you see about the corner of Prince and 
Broadway on a sunny afternoon, twisting their dyed moustaches, 
and eyeing the victim they have "roped in," who will not escape 
their fangs until his last dollar is oozed out of him. The gaming 
seemed all one way, when a young foreigner, who had been an idle 
spectator, ventured his luck. " Faro" is a game the chances of 
which are as a hundred to eighty in favor of the bank, yet this stranger 
scarcely lost a counter ; the tide was in his favor ; even the stolid 
dealer showed a nervousness. Others, attempting to follow in the 
foreigner's track, had their checks swamped, while his were doubled. 
"Was this one of those individuals known to us through the sensa- 
tion novels, who breaks banks and wins fortunes in a single sitting ? 
Well, his luck just lasted fifteen minutes, by the watch ; ; it?s all the 
other way, now ; the banker looks pleased, and the foreigner is dis- 
mayed. Let's leave them here; we have no moral to preach; 
empty pockets will talk potently to some ; those livid-faced, flashy- 
dressed patrons of the house will frighten off many ; the pawn- 
brokers and the police will know more. Let's take a smoking cup 
of black Charlie's coffee, and some broiled oysters, sprinkled with 
parsley, and then recross the threshold, forever, of this palatial 
Gambling Hell. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THIEVES, COUNTERFEITERS, CONFIDENCE OPERATORS, ETC. 

Once, while on the rounds with some detectives, after we had 
gone through some of the dance-houses, pugilistic cribs, and other 
similar resorts, one of the party said to a detective, " but we have 
not seen any of the thieves, yet ; where are your redoubtable 
rogues, pickpockets and burglars, of whose doings we read every 
day in the police reports ?" 

" Ask me where they are not," returned the officer, with a know* 
ing look ; " there's not a place we've been in to-night, where I 
couldn't have pointed out a dozen of them. Didn't you notice the 



CO NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

bar-tender, with the ruffled shirt, in the crib we have just left i 
that's ' llank, the Greaser.' He was a filibuster with Walker's band, 
and since that time he has served a term in the State Prison, for bur- 
glary, besides having been ' up at the stand,' more than once, for va- 
rious offences. He's on his good behavior, now, bat we keep half 
an eye on him. There's more like him — and worse — everywhere 
you go with me to-night." 

Nevertheless, the thieves, of all denominations, have their partic- 
ular haunts and social meetings. Terpsichore is not altogether ig- 
nored by them, and it is no unusual thing for a bail to be got up by 
the fraternity, for the relief of some erring brother or sister, who 
has been so unlucky as to run against justice, and get into " quod." 
If you are anxious to assist at one of these aristocratic gatherings, 
buy a ticket from " Hank, the Greaser," say for fifty cents, and we'll 
take a turn upon the floor. 

We will suppose a low-lived, dingy resort, somewhere in the 
Fourth Ward. It is kept by an old " cracksman," or housebreaker, 
who has graduated in the English prisons, and whose absence from 
certain colonial possessions, belonging to the British Crown, is pro- 
bably accredited by that kind of document known as a " ticket-of- 
leave." Passing through- the dirty bar-room, we find ourselves in a 
long, low-ceiled room, with a very ricketty and uneven floor. 
Benches are placed along the walls, and the place is dimly lighted 
by the gleam of two or three kerosene lamps. Upon a raised plat- 
form, at the further end of the room, are the accommodations for 
the orchestra, which consists of two darkey minstrels — one a profes- 
sor of the violin, the other a banjoist, of much natural power. The 
men who come swaggering or sneaking in, are all got up in the 
most approved " swell-mob" style, with flashy waistcoats and neck- 
ties, and jewelry of doubtful " carat." These fellows comprise all 
the branches of the profession, then 1 various designations being con- 
spicuously on record in the slang dictionaries. The members of the 
opposite sex, by whom the room is already pretty well filled, are 
fitting partners for these chevaliers of the night. Yonder is a cele- 
brated female " sneak-thief," who consolidates her earnings with the 
plunder " realized" by the swell " cracksman" who sits near her. 
Here and there you may recognize a " pretty waiter-girl," as one 
whose appearance is familiar to you in some Broadway concert- 
saloon. It is but too often that these poor creatures are linked in 
infamy with some well-known member of the " lifting" fraternity. 
That pug-nosed, thick-set young ruffian, of two or three and twenty, 
has just been released from the State Prison, where he served a term 
for robbery, accomplished by means of the garrote. The big wo- 
man, yonder, is well known to the police as an adept in the " panel 
game," and the young fellow with her is maintained in his idleness 
and starched linen, entirely by the proceeds of her indu trial crime. 
Crinoline, paint and waterfall are all on the rampage here, to the 
most alarming extent, and if ever a woman in all the throng had 
any good looks, the lines drawn upon ber features by the hands of 
dissipation and vice, have managed to obliterate them pret.y effec- 
tually. Queer aliases or soubriquets belong to each individual, mas- 
culine or feminine, on the floor. Among the men you may not, per- 
haps, recognize i( Roddy, the Jump," but he is there, and so are 



THIEVES, COUNTERFEITERS, ETC. 61 

" Little Tommy" and " Red-haired Joe." Yonder spangled waterfall 
decks the neck of " Prigging Nance," and you may be certain that 
the syren, in the red Morocco boots, is known to particular circles as 
'* Wild Madge." These fancy names are frequently applicable in an 
ironical sense, only. That somewhat advanced wench, with a slight 
abrasion on her cheek-bone, for instance, is known as " Gentle 
Annie." She once kept a concert saloon of her own, and, in pugil- 
istic ability, she is reported as being a match for any " man of her 
size." 

Before dancing sets in, there is a general " walk around" on the 
floor, to the music of the dusky orchestra. After this, the whole 
throng files up stairs to a supplementary bar-room, where whiskey is 
served out to the " gentlemen," while for the " ladies," gin and 
water seems to be the favorite refreshment. After this, the floor 
manager arranges the dances, which generally consist of Virginia 
reels, and reels in every possible variety. Later in the evening, the 
reelers will reel more than ever ; there is many a reel in every bot- 
tle that belongs to that bar. It would not be good for us to " see it 
out here to-night, and, therefore, we will take our departure, sans 
ceremonic. 

It may be that a portion of the proceeds of this thieves' ball will 
find its way to the hand of the hapless wight for whose relief it has 
been announced, but the filtering process to which the money will 
be liable will, doubtless, reduce it to a very insignificant amount. 

It is not in resorts like the crib just described," that one is likely 
to fall in with the regular " Confidence Operator," by night. This 
branch of industrial roguery includes a great variety of character, 
both male and female, and as there is, usually, a certain assumption 
of gentility connected with it, night generally finds the confidence 
operator plying his vocat.on in the well-frequented bar-rooms, on 
the steps of the hotels, and in the lobbies of the theatres. 

There is, in New York, as in other great cities, a class of well- 
dressed men, whose " confidence" operations are immediately con- 
nected with the gambling-houses. The lounger on Broadway, if he 
has an observant eye, can hardly fail to be struck by the idle de- 
portment of certain knots of men, to be seen congregated here and 
there, at various points, aloug the great thoroughfare. They are, 
many of them, the jackals of the gambling saloons, on the look-out 
for their special game. By day, they watch the passers in the mov- 
ing throng ; when they "spot" a provincial person, or a newly-ar- 
rived foreigner, who looks as though it might pay to cultivate his 
acquaintance, one of the gang will " pipe" or " dog" him, to find 
out where he puts up. Night falls ; Broadway is all aglare with 
light, and all agog with noise, and music, and feverish hurrying to 
and fro ; the stranger sallies out from his hotel to see the sights ; if 
he happen to be a rural person, the nocturnal appearance of Broad- 
way is apt to dazzle his eyes and confuse his senses. Whether he 
be a rural person or not, there is some degree of probability that, 
putting up at a hotel, he has tasted of the vintage furnished by the 
establishment, and is in a state of great contentment with himself 
and the world at large. Well, the confidence gentlemen are aware 
of all this. He follows his fancies along Broadway, taking in more 
confusion as he goes. Presently, a very fashionably-dresred man, 



62 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

with immaculate linen, and a mous cache trained out at right angles 
with his nose, accosts the stranger, and, seizing him rather boister- 
ously by the hand, says : " Why, how do you do, Mr. Robinson ; and 
when did you come ou from Chicago ? don't you remember the 
times we had together there last year ?" The stranger bows polite- 
ly, and if his name doesn't happen to be Robinson, intimates that 
there must be a mistake, but that " it's of no consequence." Here 
the confidence operator assumes an air of great self-abasement ; he 
begs to be excused ; there is such a remarkable similarity between 
stranger and the Robinson for whom the confidence man has inad- 
vertently taken him ; both of the same hight ; both wear their 
beards of the same cut. " Never mind, sir," says the stranger ; "no 
harm done," and he is about to resume his walk, but the confidence 
man, overwhelmed with confusion at having addressed a total stran- 
ger, insists that nothing short of a libation to Bacchus can restore 
him to his regular peace of mind. Acceding to his importunities, 
the stranger agrees to take a drink with him, and proposes that they 
shall adjourn to his hotel for the purpose. " Not at all, sir," says 
the confidence man ; " these hotel liquors are not to be trusted ; 
there's a club-house, just over the way, to which I belong ; that's 
the place for good liquor ! we'll go across there, and crack a bottle 
of champagne." Crossing the street after his guide, the stranger 
ascends the steps of a heavy-fronted building, the ground floor of 
which is, probably, occupied as a store. They go up a couple of 
flights of stairs ; a massive door is opened to them by a colored 
waiter, and they find themselves in a handsome suite of apartments, 
furnished expensively, and lighted up to an intense degree with 
such gas as the Manhattan Gas Company vouchsafe to supply to 
church and gambling-house alike. Dealers are forwarding the ope- 
rations of "*Faro" at the green-covered tables. There is a splendid 
supper laid out in the apartment beyond, of which the sliding-doors 
are open, affording the beholder tempting glimpses of the viands 
with which the board is laden. The place, in short, is a gambling- 
saloon in " full blast." It is now the function of the confidence 
man — who, in this branch of the business, is known as a " roper in" 
— to ascertain whether the stranger has any money about him, worth 
the game ; if he has, all the wiles of the craft are put into requisi- 
tion to induce him to play. It is needless to say that he nev^er wins, 
except when allowed to do so, for the purpose of drawing him on. 
His supper may cost him four hundred dollars, or the figure may be 
stated in thousands, according to the circumstances of the case. 
Should it so happen that the stranger has but a few dollars about 
him, wonderful is the reaction that takes place in the sentiment of 
his newly-found friend. That slimy person has a bad memory — a 
convenient one, we should rather say ; he forgets all about ordering 
that bottle of champagne ; he becomes immersed in mental arith- 
metic, suggested by a phase in the game, and turns his backuncour- 
teously upon the man who so strangely resembles the " Robinson" 
of his affections. Scowls are shot at the stranger from the eyes of 
dealers, who know well whom to scowl upon, and upon whom to 
smile. There is nothing said about supper ; the very negro waiter 
takes the cue from the confidence man — coolness — and the stranger 
is but too glad to make his way back to the street, minus his few 



THIEVES, COUNTERFEITERS, ETC. 63 

dollars, generally, which, if not staked and lost upon the game, have 
probably been obtained from him by the confidence man, as a '• tem- 
porary loan." 

But although these gambling-house confidence men are a feature 
of the city by night, there are around you, everywhere you go, hun- 
dreds of less conspicuous operators in all manner of imposture and 
swindle. Let us loiter for a short time, over our mugs of ale and 
segars, in this, one of the most respectable taverns in the city. Many 
of the persons whom you see around are tradesmen and artificers of 
good repute, but not all. Notice at that table, yonder, a stoutish- 
built man, with a dull, pale complexion and a pewtery eye. His 
black beard is cut so as to form a circular tuft around his thick- 
lipped mouth, and he is very well dressed in the neglige style so 
much adopted at the present day. In his conversation he is some- 
what loud and swaggering, and he makes a great show of knowing 
many persons who drop in, and inviting them to join him in drinks. 
That individual is out on bail at present, there being an indictment 
against him for confidence operations in the forgery branch, where- 
by he deluded certain city men out of large sums of money. He 
seems to enjoy life, and displays no traces of that wear-and-tear 
which industrious toil will sometimes impart to the worker. 

There are confidence men around you — and confidence women, 
too— in every group and small crowd encountered by you as you 
pace the streets at night. 

The counterfeiter, who works in some secret cellar or garret by 
day, making the photograph, the lithograph and the burin condu- 
cive to his nefarious objects, usually selects the approach of falling 
night as the time for putting his worthless *\ rags" in circulation. 
The first party in the transaction is the manufacturer. He has his 
emissaries, some of whom carry as much as one hundred thousand 
dollars' worth of spurious bills ready for the market. If you hap- 
pen to be in a store at night, or in a tavern or hotel bar, you will 
now and then observe a policeman enter, and, addressing the estab- 
ment generally, make some such announcement as — " Look out for 
bogus fives, representing issues of the Wamsutta Bank, Fall River." 
A note is immediately made of this ; any bill of the description of- 
fered is carefully scrutinized, and if it proves to be " bogus," the 
hander of it is given into custody. The emissaries who thus attempt 
to flood the city with counterfeit bills are but too often successful in 
their enterprise. Night is the time selected by them — or rather the 
early part of the evening — because many of the dealers, such as 
grocers and others, are then in a hurry of business, and less likely 
to look sharply at a bill before giving change for it. Sometimes 
the counterfeit sharper tries a regular confidence game. He will 
insinuate himself into the acquaintance of some green person acci- 
dentally thrown in his path. " Liquoring up" will be proposed, 
and the man with the bogus bills will take his new friend to some 
rum-shop, or grocery, kept by an accomplice. The latter gentle- 
man, pretending not to recognize his acquaintance, is yet very po- 
lite, and furnishes drinks as often as they are called for. By and 
bye the counterfeiter, who insists upon treating every round, offers 
a bill of a large denomination in payment of the score. There is not 
change for it in the bar— of course— but the green man is easily per- 



64 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YOKE. 

suaded to furnish the nesdful, and is probably arrested the next day 
for trying to pass a bogus bill ! In daylight such an operation 
would be less likely to succeed than at night, the cover of which, 
too, gives the operator all the belter chance for making good his 
retreat. 

' ; Shoving the queer" is the craft expression for circulating spuri- 
ous money. 

"With regard to pickpockets, it is immaterial to that extensive class 
of industrials whether their operations are carried on by day or by 
night. Every crowd, every car, every omnibus swarms with them. 
At night the vestibules of the theatres offer a very profitable field 
for the manipulations of these expert rascals. u . Working the tip" 
is the term given by them to their enterprise in this branch. For an 
hour or so previous to the opening of a popular theatre, there is 
usually a dense crowd csllected about the box office. When the 
ticket-taker opens his slide, the pickpocket crowds close upon the 
person paying at the moment, presses the hand of the payer up into 
the aperture, as if by accident, and having thus confined him for a 
moment, eases him of watch, money or jewelry, according to the 
chance offered by circumstances. This plunder is usually slipped 
into the hand of a confederate, who makes his way out with it amid 
the mazes of the crowd. The omnibuses, when filled with the peo- 
ple who have just left a Broadway theatre, are also the nightly 
scenes of heavy depredations by these troublesome rascals. The 
pickpocket, in these cases, usually takes his stand near an omnibus, 
where excellent opportunities of plunder are afforded to him as 
people jostle, and crowd, and struggle into the vehicle. He will 
also enter the omnibus when it is very full, and, swaying lojsely 
from the straps, will spirit away many a brooch and many a watch 
from passengers who are intent upon the ignominious operation of 
"spouting" their money up to the driver through the hole in the 
roof. Look sharp should you have to travel on the rear platform 
of a city horse-car by night. There is no more favorable place for 
the operations of a pickpocket than this. A story goes of the " man 
with the false arms," who made a large income by his pursuit of this 
branch of the craft. This natural-born genius used to wear a cape, 
beneath which his arms were just visible, with the hands thrust well 
down into the trouser's pockets. But these were only stuffed sleeves. 
His real arms were at work under the cape, and, with the light 
" bunches of fives" at the end of them, did very considerable execu- 
tion upon the loose property of the unsuspecting passengers. 

It is at night, also, that the " sneak thief" chiefly does his prowl- 
ing, the opportunities then afforded him being usually safer than 
such as may turn up by day. These fellows commit their depreda- 
tions by slipping into doorways on pretence of having letters or 
parcels to deliver. They watch persons who are shopping at night, 
and abstract packages from the baskets or carriages in which they 
have been stowed. There is, in fact, no kind of mean pilfering in 
which the " sneak thief" is not an adept, and he is usually tbe mean- 
est of scoundrels and the most cowardly of poltroons. We once 
had, from an eye-witness of the occurrence, the following anecdote, 
in which a group of " sneak thieves" is brought into bold light and 
shade. 



HAUNTS OF TIIE ACTORS. 65 

The scene is at night— Brooklyn the locality. Three of these fel- 
lows, from New York, were on the prowl for plunder in the City of 
Churches. It was a blank night with them ; but just as they were 
about returning to their city crib, chance took them past a plumber's 
shop, against the rails of which a roll of sheet lead had been care- 
lessly left standing. This wa3 immediately lifted by the thieves, 
who took it to a vacant lot, where a council was held about the 
plunder. The only way they could hit on for carrying it was for 
the strongest of the party to strip off his coat and waistcoat, and 
having wound the lead round his body, to replace the garments and 
button them tightly over it. This done, the party proceeded to the 
nearest ferry, and took boat for the city. The thief with the load 
took his seat upon the rail of the boat, which, agitated by the wake 
of a passing steamer, gave a lurch, and losing his balance, over- 
board he went. Then there was a flurry and a rushing to and fro, 
and a cry of " man overboard 1" 

" Don't be in a hurry, gentlemen !" cried an elderly man in spec- 
tacles ; " the night is moonlight ; the man will rise three times be- 
fore he finally goes to the bottom!" 

" Five he don't I" exclaimed one of the remaining thieves, pro- 
ducing his money, and who, being in the secret of the lead, saw 
nothing in the drowning of his late comrade but a good chance of 
making five dollars by a bet. 

This was characteristic of the " sneak thief," and is a legitimate 
sketch of a phase of city life at night. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

HAUNTS OF THE ACTORS. 

"SHiLL I not take mine ease in mine inn?" is a Falstaffian query, 
involving the right of every man to rest and refreshment. The 
actor's profession is a laborious one ; much of his work is over only 
when the night is well advanced, and it would be strange, indeed, 
if the suggestion conveyed in the words of the obese Knight did 
not influence the " tenor of his way" as soon as the foot-lights are 
extinguished, and the prompter's bell put away for the night. Talk- 
ing is but dry work, at best ; and no more anomalous, or, indeed, 
incomplete person could well be imagined, than an actor who 
doesn't care for his beer. 

The houses of public entertainment to which the actors resort 
after the play is over, are, for the most part, situated in the central 
district of the city. They are generally kept on the English chop- 
house plan — places where the bar is auxiliary to the kitchen, instead 
of being the principal attraction, as in the larger American estab- 
lishments. A description of a few of the leading places of this 
class will serve to give an idea of all. 

One of the best known among them 13 the House of Lords, at the 
corner of Houston and Crosby streets. It is kept by Mr. H. E. 
Sharp, and is decidedly English in its aspect and arrangements. 
The public room i3 one of moderate size, furnished with a number 



66 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

of small tables, and having a small bar attached to it next the Hous- 
ton street entrance. This bar is fitted witb a very accommodating 
beer pump, from which the thirsty customer can obtain either ale or 
porter, according to his fancy, or both mixed in the form of "half- 
and-half," if he likes that better. It is hung with many mugs of 
bright metal, interspersed with little jugs of glossy, brown earthen- 
ware. The old-time pewter mug of England is supposed to be re- 
presented by the former, though there is a touch of harder metal 
than pewter in their amalgam. The brown beer-jugs are of the pat- 
tern known as the " Toby," and are in great request. That name, 
doubtless, has its origin in the old English drinking-song, beginning 
" Dear Tom, this brown jug which now foams with mild ale ;" for 
the ditty proceeds, further on, to intimate that said jug is composed 
of clay, once animated by the spirit of one Toby Tosspot, a toper 
of mark in his day. A show-card over the bar front sets forth the 
savory promise of " Tripe, Wednesday and Saturday," others an- 
nounce (t pickled pigs' feet" and sundry other delicacies, and the 
back-ground of the bar is made up of a very kaleidoscopic show of 
bottles and decanters of the most fanciful kind, with glasses to 
match. There is a very half-and-half air about the place generally 
— a combination of cricket and the drama, in about equal propor- 
tions. Yonder you will observe a large lithograph of some cele- 
brated " eleven," all ranged in a row for their portraits, all rough 
and ready in their flannel and canvas shoes. A bust of Shakspeare 
reigns over the theatrical element of the place, and the door-jambs 
are hung with files of play-bills from the leading theatres, while the 
drama is further represented by a picture of " Garrick surrounded 
by his Friends." 

And here comes the proprietor of the house — a shortish, well- 
built, wiry man, somewhat bald, and wearing a black moustache. 
Few men are better known to the cricketing fraternity than Sharp, 
who is a player of such renown, that no " eleven," for a special 
match, is ever made up in his club without his being counted in. 
Many a time have we seen him " carry out his bat," amid the plau- 
dits of the spectators ; and it may truly be said of him that he is 
not more popular as a cricketer than he is as a landlord and a man. 
And yet, of late, he seems to leave a good deal of the management 
of affairs to " Larry," the polite and dexterous manipulator so long 
in charge of the bar. and who, as locum teriens, has established a re- 
putation for himself second to none. 

After ten o'clock at night, there is always a sprinkling of theatri- 
cal men, critics, and performers in the various branches of the show 
business, to be found at the House of Lords. The fumes of the 
pungent Welsh rarebit then mingle voluminously with those of the 
fragrant Havana, and there is a very general demand for the mug, 
the toby, and the tumbler of reeking-hot whiskey punch. Possibly, 
through the mixed mist of the night, you may see looming up the 
portly form of Mark Smith, whose delineations of stout elderly gen- 
tlemen, with sententious utterances, evoked from the depths of their 
boots, are so familiar to all play-goers. If you have never seen him 
outside one of these avuncular specialties of his, for which he makes 
up so admirably, you will be surprised to find how young a man he 
is. If the smiling Adolphus H. Davenport — the " Dolly" of popu- 



HAUNTS OF TIIE ACTORS. 67 

lar delight— happens to be in town, ho is very likely to be here, too. 
" Dolly' 7 is not, usually, the first to leave the circle, if the exercises 
are of a convivial character. Towering over the general level of 
the assembled heads, may sometimes here be seen the classic one of 
Charles Fisher — the handsomest member of the theatrical fraternity 
of New York, as well as one of the best dressed. But to run 
through the list would require more space thau we have ait our com- 
mand. By the door, yonder, there hangs a frame, containing many 
carte dc visile portraits of well known members of the theatrical 
profession, all, or most of whom have, at one time or another, been 
frequent habitues of the House of Lords. 

Next door to the resort just mentioned, as you go toward Broad- 
way, is the house called the Clifton Shades, kept by two smart, in- 
telligent young Sheffield men, Harry and Charles Clifton ; whose 
taste for pictures may be judged of by a glance at the walls, which 
are covered with works of art from surface to ceiling. Among 
these you will occasionally observe some choice water-color draw- 
ings, and there is sometimes a portfolio of such, for exhibition to 
regular customers only. The place, altogether, has a very prosper- 
ous and comfortable look, and the valuo of taste in fitting up an es- 
tablishment is illustrated by the class of customers to bo seen in 
this one. Here, of an evening, you may sometimes see John 
Brougham — who is a greater " swell" than ever since his long so- 
journ in England, and quite as jovial and companionable as he used 
to be in the nights gone by. With him, of course, will be Tom 
Morris, and it is more than probable that John Owens, wonderfully 
spruced up from his lt Uncle Shingle" of ten minutes ago, will be 
here to allay the honest thirst contracted by him in that wonderful 
piece of character acting. There is a good deal of theatrical gossip 
to be picked up at the Clifton Shades, than which there are few 
pleasanter evening resorts for all who like to keep themselves 
«' posted" in the current on dit of dramatic and other art. 

But, of all the city houses of entertainment to which actors are 
in the habit of resorting o' nights, perhaps the leading place should 
be awarded to the De Soto, No. 71 Bleecker street, three doors east 
of Broadway. This house was opened, some four years ago, by its 
present proprietor, Mr. Yfilliam H. Garrard, under whose able man- 
agement it at once acquired a reputation which it yet fully sustains. 
The De Soto i3 so called after the steamer of that name, formerly 
belonging to the New Orleans and Havana line of packets, to which 
vessel Mr. Garrard was attached in the capacity of caterer— a capa- 
city in which he availed himself of his many opportunities for mak- 
ing a host of friends. Mr. Garrard is an Englishman, quite of the 
landlord type — polite, portly, and displaying that incipient tendency 
to baldness frequently to be remarked in individuals possessed of 
strong administrative abilities. The public room of tho De Soto is 
fitted up with a degree of elegance not generally characteristic of 
the English chop-house equipment. From the ceiling there depends 
a large chandelier, the ga3 fitting3 of which are fashioned to repre- 
sent wax candles. The apartment is long and narrow, and may be 
compared, not unaptly, to the saloon of a first-class, sea-going 
steamer, Black walnut is the material with which the walls are 
wainscotted, and along them runs a velvet band, for the reception of 



68 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

the heads of such customers as feel the better for tilting back their 
chairs. Small tables are arranged about the room. The bar is much of 
the same style as that of the House of Lords — small, trim, and very 
full of the bric-a-brac properly belonging to such arrangements ; and, 
with regard to the quality of liquors dispensed at it, it is not ex- 
celled by any similar establishment in the city. There is a small 
parlor off the public room, where accommodation can be had for 
private parties, on a limited scale, and a larger one up-stairs, in 
which dinners or suppers can be got up at fair notice, for Amphitry- 
ons who wish to " do the thing up" handsomely. 

Evening always brings to the De Soto a greater or lesser number 
of representatives of literature, art and journalism, and later on at 
night, the actors and dramatic critics are sure to come dropping in, 
singly, or in squads. Broiled kidneys and Welch rarebits are in de- 
mand then, and the circulation of ale is only second to that of the 
various denominations of beverage that require to be compounded 
with skill. The assemblage is broken up into knots, and the hum 
of conversation surges to and fro upon the smoke-wreaths that are 
evolved from many segars. Yonder sits Humphrey Bland, the well- 
known actor, gypsy-like, with his long, dark locks, now slightly rip- 
pled with grey. At the same table with him sits De Walden, the 
dramatist, white and venerable as to his beard, but with all the fire 
of youth yet burning upon his intellectual front. To them present- 
ly comes Frank Chanfrau, who has just dropped in from his hun- 
dredth personation of " Sam/"' in Be Walden's successful comedy 
bearing that title. Bluff Harry Pearson now appears, copious of 
dialect and cookery, and one who himself " knows how to keep a 
hotel," or, at least, thinks he does, which i3 not, perhaps, exactly 
the same thing. He acts an English rustic well, and is excellent in 
broad burlesque ; also, he knows how to cook a beefsteak pudding, 
and is not, in the least, too proud to acknowledge his proficiency in 
the art, although he will give you to understand, in moments con- 
trolled by the festal goblet, that he is heir to an English baronetcy. 
That dark, heavy-browed gentleman, who might pass for a dissent- 
ing minister, come in to convert us heathen, is one of the cleverest 
comedians now upon the American stage. His name is Holston, and 
he is a member of Wallack's company ; but his first appearance in 
this country was made at the Olympic, not much over a year ago, 
when he made a great hit in the character of Byhs, and another in 
that of Milky White. The fair, almost feminine-looking young gen- 
tleman, with whom he is talking, is Edward House, the well-known 
dramatic critic, author, jointly with Dion Boucicauifc, of the success- 
ful play of " Arrah na Pogue." Along with them sits Glenny, who 
plays Shaun the Post in that drama, and looks as Irish as a " lum- 
per" potato, though we understand him to be of English birth. 
Glenny was imported specially, in the Spring of 1865, consigned to 
Mr. House, and, if there were an ad valorem duty upon actors, we 
should say that he would be rated by custom-house officials at a 
pretty tall figure. Mr. Charle3 Dillon, the Belphegor of renown, is 
sure to drop in here if he is in the city. He is an Englishman, too, 
and yet he looks as though the New York might claim him for one of 
the ' ; hunkieat" of her sons. But a few short months ago, and the 
portly figure of poor John Cooke would have been conspicuous in 



IIAUNTS OF THE ACTORS. G9 

the throng, for John was one of the regular habitues of the Do Soto. 
"We used to call him " old John Cooke," because of his baldness and 
stoutness, and generally paternal ah*, and yet he was hardly forty-five 
years old when he went his way, and that solemn service was 
chanted over him in Trinity Chapel, on the 7th of November, 1865. 
It was good to sit at the same table with John Cooke, in the De 
Soto, of a night, for his fund of anecdote, connected with theatrical 
people and things, was inexhaustible, and he was a rare raconteur. 
Sometimes his memory would recall an old lay, picked up by him 
long ago in the London cave3 of song, and then he would sing it to 
you under his breath, and so confidentially, that none but those in 
his immediate group would be aware of the convivial strain. When 
Banting's pamphlet upon obesity came out, John Cooke became a 
disciple of that once great man, with a view of reducing his three 
hundred pounds of flesh. Great was his triumph when he had 
taken off eighty, which he did within a few weeks. To our way of 
thinking, though, he overdid the matter ; and we cannot help our 
conviction that, had Banting never written his book, John Cooke 
might yet have been alive and well. John Mortimer, the brilliant 
light comedian, is here, too, very particular, as usual, about his kid 
gloves, and yon wiry little Irishman is Scallan, who plays so excel- 
lently the character of the villain, Feeny, in " Arrah na Pogue." 
Observe the hilarity that distinguishes the group around tbat table 
over in the corner, by the window. The central figure in the group 
is a tall, slender young man, in a grey overcoat. He wears a nose 
of the Roman type, only more so. His complexion is of a uniform, 
wholesome, bricksome red. His light-brown, glossy hair is of such 
luxuriance and waviness behind, that many a girl must envy him for 
it, and would kis3 him for his waterfall, only that the world is so 
censorious. 'I he growth of his moustache is of a wiry and obsti- 
nate character ; it will not be repressed, and it persists in maintain- 
ing a defiant and fiory aspect. His linen is absolutely immaculate, 
and his neck-tie, which is, usually, of a lazulite blue, is confined by 
a jewel of imperial price. Remark what long slender hands he has, 
the white fingers looking as though they had been constructed spe- 
cially with a view to presentation rings. When ho delivers a joke, 
he does it with a reserved fire that never fails to provoke a laugh, 
and when he is impressed with the jokes of others, his laugh is very 
peculiar, being inward, silent, and accompanied by severe corruga- 
tions of his nose. The subject of this rough pen-and-ink sketch is 
none other than Charles F. Browne, so well known through the 
length and breadth of the land as " Artemus Ward." His lecture, 
or '• show," as he would call it himself, upon life among the Mor- 
mons, is one of the most popular entertainments that has been be- 
fore the public for years, and his books are selling like " wild-fire" 
on both sides of the Atlantic. Frequently, in this room, though not 
often so late at night as this, maybe seen the well-known dramatist, 
Mr. Charles Gaylor, his massive features thrown into deep shade by 
a very wkle-brimmed hat, which, with his fraity complexion, and 
luxuriant golden hair, gives him quite the air of a portrait by one 
of the old masters. 

Nor is the minstrel element unrepresented here. Most evenings, 
about ten o'clock, Neil Bryant and his brother, Dan, are sure to drop 



TO NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

in, with complexions so clear, and hands so unsullied, that you 
would hardly think they had been doing burnt-cork business not 
ten minuses ago. Dan declines to " go back on" the darkey, though 
his performance of Irish character would always secure him a place 
on the regular stage. Charles Henry, the vocalist, is also a fre- 
quenter of the De Soto, where, sometimes, on occasions of particu- 
lar festivity, he contributes to the harmony of the evening with some 
of the melodies he sings so sweetly. Not unfrequently, either, we 
have met here with S. C. Campbell, once in the minstrel business 
himself, but who has, of late, transferred his fine baritone to the ly- 
rical stage. Taking the De Soto altogether, with its association of 
actors, authors and critics, there is, perhaps, more theatrical gossip 
to be picked up in it, than in any other of the city resorts. 

Further up town, at No. 81 Fourth avenue, near the corner of 
Tenth street, is the Sir John Falstaff, a tavern having a picture of 
that jolly Knight over its doorway for a sign. This house is kept by 
Mr. W. H. Norton, a member of the stock company at Wallack's 
Theatre, and formerly a partner with H. E. Sharp in the House of 
Lords. " Mine host" is a handsome, stoutish gentleman, with a re- 
markably fine head of Lair, which, in the characters usually assigned 
to him at the theatre, relieves him from the superfluity of a wig. 
Mr. Norton has a fine taste in pictures, his judgment in which, we 
believe, is due to his having studied art, as a miniature painter, pre- 
vious to his adoption of the stage for his profession. Often, in the 
Sir John Falstaff, at night, may be seen actors belonging to the up- 
town theatres, attaches'of the Academy of Music, and the usual va- 
riety of character dependent on the shows in general. Jn fixtures, 
this hostelrie differs but little from some of those already described. 
The fox's head over the oar imparts somewhat of a sporting charac- 
ter to the place, but then, at the farther end of the room, there are 
many portraits of noted theatrical personages. Among these, there 
is a good print from Sir Thomas Lawrence's famous picture of John 
Kemble, in the character of Coriolanus. 

Still further up town, on Fourth avenue, near Thirteenth street, 
and just in the rear of Wallack's Theatre, is The Green Room, a 
small, snug, theatrical tavern, kept by Mr. G. F. Browne, who, like 
the host last mentioned, is a member of the stock company at Wal- 
lack's. Like his house, Mr. Browne is small and snug, the very 
ideal of a well-fed Englishman, of the duodecimo size. From floor 
to ceiling, the walls of the double apartment comprising the bar of 
the Green Room are covered with engravings, photographs, litho- 
graphs, and every conceivable style of graph, large and small, of 
gentlemen and ladies to whom the foot-lights are familiar, and the 
original green-room a haven of occasional rest. There is hardly an 
actor or actress of any fame, on either side of the Atlantic, whose 
portrait is not to be found in this theatrical gallery. The photo- 
graphs are mostly of the " imperial" standard, and executed in the 
highest style of the art ; and, by any one who wants to familiarize 
himself with the personal appearance of the leading men and wo- 
men of the day, theatrically speaking, an hour cannot be better 
spent than in examining the " living presentments" here collected 
by our jolly little host of the Green Room. Many members of Wal- 
lack's company drop in here of a night, and, in the opera season, 



HAUNTS OF THE ACTORS. 11 

the lyrical stars of the Academy of Music may often be seen here, 
wetting their mellow whistles with the malt beverages, so indispen- 
sable to the production of chest notes. 

There are many other places in the city, some of the same class 
as those just described, others of the French or German land, to 
which theatrical men resort frequently at night, when their labors 
are over, and tired nature is vociferous for its true restorer — balmy 
drink. One such place we will here briefly touch upon, and that is 
the extensive basement restaurant, No. G53 Broadway, presided 
over by Mr. Charles Pfaff. It is a good many years, now, since we 
first became acquainted with Mr. Pfaff, who then practiced gastron- 
omy in a smaller cave, a block or so further up Broadway. The 
circle of his customers, at that time, was small and select. There 
was a primitive air about the old cellar. You should have seen 
Pfaff himself, in those days, rushing about among his guests with a 
small child under his arm, just as if, in the hurry of the moment, he 
had mistaken C. Pfaff, Jr., for a napkin, and was going to wipe the 
table with him. That child has now blossomed into a handsome 
boy, of whom his father is justly proud ; he may yet be President 
of the United States. In process of time, a kuot of literary men 
and artists made the discovery of Pfaff's, and the little, old cellar 
became their regular place of resort. The circle " drew," and 
their channels for publishing a good thing carried round th® name 
of Pfaff. Then the old cellar was found to be inadequate to the in- 
creasing custom of the place, and, for years, Pfaff located himself 
in a larger one, on Broadway, near Bleecker street. This cave be- 
came quite a celebrated resort for artists, critics, actors, and the lit- 
erary brotherhood at large, having, besides, its large entourage of 
German, French and other foreign custom, which gave a somewhat 
European character to the place. Later still, oar host of the cellar 
removed his properties to the much larger and more convenient one 
over which he, at present, despotically reigns. In the rear of this 
he devised, last summer, a new and attractive feature, by fitting up 
an open yard in the semblance of an intramural garden, with won- 
derful trees and shrubs, some of which are real from the rcot to the 
height of a foot or so, and were then continued by brush of scenic 
artist to any height, upon the wall. This place is canopied over 
with a huge canvas awning, and it is a curious scene to behold Cap- 
tain Pfaff, when a heavy thunder shower is coming up from leeward, 
giving the word, as if from the quarter-deck, for all hands to hoist 
sail, and to see the German waiters going up rigging, and belaying, 
and hauling in slacks, and letting go sheets, and doing fifty other 
very salt and maritime things, with a view to getting the piece of 
canvas into a position for staving off the storm. _ This is, really, a 
delicious place of resort on a drowsy summer night, and to it, in 
addition to the large foreign element, come a number of dramatic 
critics, and peo le" connected with the neighboring theatres. The 
Winter Garden, especially, is represented here " when the shades of 
night prevail f and why shouldn't it be, seeing that it was by the 
pencil of a scenic artist belonging to that establishment, that yon 
gorgeous landscape was dashed off boldly upon the wall, up which, 
also, Pfaff s climbing plants never could have made their way, but 
for the illusion wrought by the same magic touch. 



72 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

CHAPTER XV. 

OUE ALL NIGHT EATING HOUSES. 
BY A. FLUNKEY. 

Not much of an edication, thank ye — not being posted up in the 
literary way, but have traveled round the world (it was by water, 
you can take your affydavy), being born the son of a sea cook, and 
instructed in my parents' line of business, from roast dog or baby 
chowder at New Zealand, to beefsteak rare and weal pie, plenty of 
crust, (which last order always gives mo a lively recollection of 
kittens) while the first renders wisible a nice old gentleman who was 
short of teeth, among other trifles, and who made the inwariable 
remark, when I was unfortunate enough to wait on him — u Right off 
the horns. I'll bet my head. I've had my share of misfortunes, 
roaming round the world like a rolling s'one that gathers no moss ; 
but what cooked my goose to a turn was Sarah Jane, whom I wooed 
and wedded, thinking her an angel, when she turned out the re- 
werse, for she eloped one day with my particular friend, Jenkins, 
who had the mortal assurance to borrow my best Sunday breeches 
to do the job in. Instead of letting her slide, as a sensible man 
would, I took to drinking whiskey straight, and I soon lost my 
berth in a first class dining saloon, where I was the admiration of 
the guests, (for nothing short of a steam engine could beat me in 
giving or taking orders) and was obliged to take a situation at an 
all-night house in Centre street, kept by a man who was recognized 
by the public as Pop Clark, and whose ambition never rose above 
pork and beans and cold corned ham. To be sure, there was a 
roast chicken in the window, but, bless your unsophisticated heart, 
it was only a sign. He was preserved like an Egyptian mummy, 
with pepper and spices, and so old that Samson could not have 
pulled him apart with a pair of pincers. You can bet your life, 
when anybody inquired the price of that chicken, he was just sold ; 
but one night some rowdies made a foray on the premises, and the 
venerable relic disappeared. It was the fowl proceeding that 
busted up the establishment of Pop Clarke. 

Five and twenty years ago, there stood a three story and attic 
mansion on the corner of Franklin and Centre streets, known far 
and wide as the Break of Day House. Do I know the Duke of Ka- 
ciac? Certainly. Am I acquainted with Count Nocount? To be 
sure I am. They were prime customers of the Break of Day House, 
and made fearful havoc on its ham sandwiches and pickled tongues, 
and then picked their teeth on the steps of the Astor or Globe 
Hotel. A stranger could have any quality of refreshment he de- 
sired at the Break of Day ; I've known 'em, Mr. Editor, to mix a 
dozen kinds of drinks out of the same bottle, and I believe if a man 
had called for pate defois grass — that's about as near the name as 
my French will allow, though in plain English, it's nothing more 
nor less than a pic, made out of the livers of diseased geese — it 
would have been served up to him at the shortest notice. Booth, 




wt5<m 



14 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

the tragedian, wandered in there one night, and being sociably in- 
toxicated, went through the tent scene of Richard, to the great edi- 
fication of the crowd, and the girls from Laden and Ketchy's dance- 
house, who patronized the establishment to a great extent. There 
was always a lively game of three penny ante bluff going on in the 
back room, and there were some amiable gentlemen of leisure ever 
ready to teadi the unsophisticated the mysteries of the little joker. 
Now, Mr. Author, you are going to give my experience as a Flun- 
key • you must do it in a readable sort of a way, for, as I said be- 
fore, I am mighty short of book-learning, and I am determined 
never to put a blotron the profession. 

My energy and persewerance to get along in the world, I must 
say, was commendable ; I don't think I was ever more industrious 
in my life than while employed at the Break of Day. My worthy 
boss gave me all the instruction my merit deserved 5 I was always 
readyto take a fourth hand at bluff, and I soon learned to pull from 
the bottom, and deal short faro out of hand. My ambition was to 
rise, and such was my tact and talent that I have frequently rung in 
three cold decks of an evening. Confidence Jake, who was one of 
our patrons, said I was worthy of a gold medal, and Confidence 
Jake was a man of experience, and a first class sporter. To be 
sure, he fetched up to Sing Sing, but wasn't Napoleon sent to St. 
Helena. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and 
there was not the difference of one of Butter Cake Dick's crullers, 
who done a famous all-night business in a cellar on Spruce street, 
between Nassau and William. There was the next round turn 
where fortune brought me to, and I must allow that my dignity felt 
lowered a peg at being ordered about by ragged paper venders, and 
nothing gave me a gleam of consolation except J enkins, who came 
in, one January night, with the toes of his boots out, and rather un- 
comfortably attired in a linen duster, and who inquired if his credit 
was good for three butter cakes and a cup of coffee, to which I re- 
sponded : 

" William, where is my Sarah Jane V' 

He recognized me, on the instant, as the injured husband whom 
he had so foully wronged, and muttered through his set teeth. 
"She's bolted!" 

" Now, don't you think you are a nice man for a small tea party ?" 
I suggested, with a withering smile, " to come here and ask tick for 
grub of a man from whom you stole his wife and Sunday breeches ?" 

He was positively dumbibundered at this sarcasm, and in that 
state I seized him by the throat and shook him till his teeth chat- 
tered, and finally ended by kicking him into the street, without his 
making the slightest resistance. Mr. Author, I felt as happy at that 
moment as if I held four aces against a king full. 

Butter Cake Dick did a thriving business, being patronized by 
all the newsboys about town, and 1 must say that he was an amia- 
ble sort of a boss, having only two weaknesses — inflammatory rheu- 
matism, and a strong desire to go to fancy dress balls in soldier 
uniform. If a ball of that character was advertised when Dick was 
obliged to use crutches, it made him decidedly " grapey." Some- 
times our class of customers varied to a large extent. I have 
known aldermen, and politicians of every grade, to drop in at all 



OUR ALL NIGHT EATING IIOUSES. 15 

hours of the night, and who, no doubt, being stalled on toast tur- 
key and turtle soup, made a banquet on butter cakes and coffee 
that seemed to agree with their constitutions admirably. At elec- 
tion times, our custom from Tammany Hall alone has often 
amounted to ten dollars a night. It might have been a little un- 
pleasant for them to set at the same table v\ ith the gentleman in 
hard luck, but who had seen the day he was as good as ever he was ; 
and it must have rankled deep in their patriotic bosoms to hear 
themselves quoted by the newsboys as third rate " sardines," and 
they only patronized Dick's saloon because the butter cakes were 
almost as big as bolivars. What a man couldn't learn at Dick's 
wasn't worth knowing, for the newsboys are as sharp as steel traps, 
and what the most of them drop down is a waluable consideration 
to pick up. I have not the slightest doubt my education was much 
improved at Butter Cake Dick's, but the best of friends must tear 
themselves apart, and an increase of salary placed me as a fixture 
in an all-night house on West Broadway. There was a gambling- 
room overhead, and a lagerbeer saloon in the cellar, that accommo- 
dated lady boarders of questionable morals, for they sang flash 
songs and indulged in free fights on the most trivial occas ons. The 
windows were set off with red and white curtains, in shape like a 
fan, and though no one person ever seemed to visit the establish- 
ment a second time, I think the Dutch landlord, whom the girls 
called " Boss," must have laid by money, and I am willing to bet 
an oyster supper that any fat goose who went in there would be 
sure to come out a plucked gosling. The sign over his door was 
" The Sailor's Hjpme, and all Nations' retreat," and I think that 
most of his patrons were taken in and done for. The business he 
followed was not quite so extensive then as it is at present, and 
more poetical names have been adopted since lager became a stand- 
ing drink. Mercer, Greene and Wooster streets are lined with 
" Rosebuds," " Emeralds," and even " Bee Hives," with an occa- 
sional sprinkling of '■' Miss Julias," " Lauras" and " Seraphinas" to 
fascinate the unwary, who are not posted up in that kind of New 
York luxury. Take one piece of advice from an old Flankey ; if 
you ever want to visit such establishments from cariosity, leave 
your wallet at home on the piano, or you'll wish you had. Some 
of the lady charmers have very attractive fingers, and can weed a 
pocket-book much better than they know how to darn stockings. 
As I have informed you before, Mr. Author, there was a gambling- 
room kept over our restaurant, and the proprietor was a short, 
thick-set man, who dealt " faro" at twelve dollars and a half limits, 
and who was known among his companions as "Slippery Jarvey." 
1 never see any one pull the cards from the box with equal dexter- 
ity, and when the bank made a winning deal, to hear him talk horse 
was the most refreshing conversation, I think, I ever had the plea- 
sure to listen to. " There never was a race," says Jarvey. " that 
came out so even before ; in fact, gentlemen, it was neck and neck 
clean up to the judge's stand, and there wasn't a hair's breadth be- 
tween the brown filly and the grey horse ; (bet nine loses, gentle- 
men, and the ace wins — not a cop on the ace.) Let me see, gentle- 
men, where was I in my story. 
•' I don't know where you was," said the player, who had gone 



76 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

for his last check on the nine ; but I know where I wish you had 

been sent before you commenced the last deal, and that is to ." 

It's against ray morals to mention the place, Mr. Author, but I never 
heard of anybody wearing an overcoat in that country. " Jarvey" 
2>aid no attention to such compliments, of which he received a large 
supply from most of the players, in the classic language of West 
Broadway. When he made a losing deal, he barr'd horse and 
talked sick headache, and I have known hard-hearted individuals, 
who bucked against the " tiger," wish that it might fall in two 
pieces or might split apart, at the very moment his pile was lower- 
ing with the most fearful rapidity. The '• Tapis Franc" was a jolly 
house in its day, but the West Broadway crib could give it a chalk 
in the g wa.3. 

I recollect one night, when Spanish Joe was broke, he made a re- 
mark that beat any mathematics that I had ever heard of. He had 
been watching the pot, and it win through the deal without ary 
cent on either the six, seven or eight. He says, while the tears 
stood in his eyes, " there, if any man had a put down a tin whistle 
in the pot, it would have run to a wagon load of fish horns." Such 
a tact for figures showed that Joe's education had not been trifled 
with. He was an industrious and worthy young man, with an am- 
bition to pull from the bottom that I never saw excelled. He was 
never a Member of Congress, wore a white neck-tie that made him 
look like a parson, and died with a hasty consumption. He had a 
lively appetite for oysters when in luck, and complained of indi- 
gestion when he was dead broke. One day, Death caught him on 
the turn, and he pegged out. 

When the game up stairs was red hot, the gay gamboliers would 
sometimes set four and twenty hours at a stretch, and it was about 
the only thing that I had against my situation ; I wa3 continually 
compelled to be running up and down stairs with their orders. It 
seemed to me that they eat, drank and slept at the table, and I have 
often almost let the dishes drop, with laughter, to hear the expres- 
sions they would make use of when they were bucking in hard luck, 
<; There I go again, flop on the turn." " There I come again, Mr. 
Dealer ; pay me ! pay me ! Ten's a bet, and nary cent to it. There 
I go again on the bet aee." " There comes up my gentleman Jack. 
Jack Spratt would eat no fat, and his wife would eat no lean. Pay 
me ! pay me, Mr. Dealer." i: Tickle me, tickle me, tickle me, do ; 
tickle me, and I'll tickle you." This was about the usual run of the 
conversation at Jarvey, Skinner & Co.'s, and things went on smooth 
enough, till one night an unfortunate young man, who had not made 
a winning deal for some weeks, and who, during that time, had been 
a heavy loser, took it into his foolish head to blow his brains out, 
and what is most remarkable, they landed on the ace king square, 
where not a check was down, though it win plumb through, and 
against an unlimited game a dollar would have paroled to a hun- 
dred thousand as easy as winking. At the moment the pistol went 
off, I had just entered the room with a dozen raw, two toasts and a 
beefsteak and onions, but the gentlemen who gave the orders disap- 
peared before the smoke of the pistol cleared away, and 1 found 
myself surrounded by half a dozen " Peelers," and one of them de- 
manded of me, who had done the foul and bloody dead. 



OUR ALL NIGU.T EATING IIOUSES. '17 

"Hisself, I reckon ; he blowed out his brains because the cards 
run rough 5 the chaps who patronize the saloon have all ' cut their 
lucky, 7 but, at any rate, I had nothing to do with it, and was only 
filling some orders that came down stairs to the saloon where I am 
employed," 

They whispered together for a moment, as though they were plot- 
ting mischief, and the same man who spoke before said, " Young 
man, we will have to detain you as a witness till after the Coroner 
holds an inquest, unless you can give bail for your appearance at 
court. He may have blowed out his own brains, or he may not ; I 
rather think he has, but that don't alter the case. You must put on 
your coat, and go with us to the station-house." 

I felt comparatively easy, for I knew that the boss could not well 
dispense with my services, and if he did go back on me, why I had 
" Confidence Jake" still left, who was ready to go bail for a high- 
way robbery or murder for, say, the sum of twenty-five dollars down 
on the nail. The boss stuck to me like a true man, and as there was 
no charge against me (having entered the room a second or two top 
late), I was not an important witness, and was discharged immedi- 
ately after the coroner's jury gave in their verdict of Suicide. 

As I have always had a lively impression of ghosts, I did not feel 
easy in my situation after the occurrence took place, and I believe 
the gamblers were as superstitious as myself, for they immediately 
removed their game to other quarters. 

Without this impediment I was suited well enough, for I used to 
have lots of fun with the girls who visited the theatres, and we done 
our most thriving trade with that class between the hours of one 
and two in the morning. The boss liked their custom, for they in- 
variably paid promptly for what they had, except they came 
in " lush," after having indulged in a fight with their lovers, when 
their cuttings up sometimes beat tiger cats all to nothing. Some of 
them looked the most delicate creatures in the world, but eat and 
drank like 'longshoremen. 

One night, in Thomas street, a young girl who used to visit our 
place was murdered with a hatchet. The coroner's jury could not 
make out who was the guilty party who done the deed, but suspi- 
cion always pointed to her lover, who had been trying some time 
to get rid of her, but which act, on his part, she strongly opposed. 
Story writers have always maintained that Helen J—— was beau- 
tiful and possessed a good education, when the fact is, Mr. Author, 
she could scarcely write her own name, had a pug nose, and drank 
like a fish. I only mention these facts to show how a story stretches 
under extraordinary circumstances, for I deplored her sad fate as 
much as my feelings would allow, since Sarah Jane blunted 'em 
against the fair sex, and I must say she was good-hearted and spent 
her money free, and never took a drink at our saloon without ask- 
ing me to have something along. 

The city has changed greatly, Mr. Author, since I first took up 
the occupation of a night-waiter. Twenty years ago, there were 
two large dining saloons open all night in Chatham street, at which 
lodgers were also accommodated at the rate of twelve and a half 
cents per niqdit, and as some twenty or thirty were generally stowed 
uway in each room, if a stranger escaped in his shirt in the morn- 



78 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

ing, he might consider himself in a comfortable state of convales- 
cence. No tamer bed-bugs existed in New York ; the rooms smelled 
of liver and fried onions, and the houses were so well patronized 
by " knucks" and " cracksmen" that the landlords never took any 
responsibility. If yon asked " Are all things safe ?" they would 
reply, <( You must run your chances, and keep a sharp look-out ; 
Do you suppose we can afford to keep watchmen at twelve and a 
half cents per night ?" The biggest trouble I ever saw two men in 
was at one of those houses. A ,; knuck" had seized upon one of 
each of their boots, and there did not seem any way to accommo- 
date the matter, as the smallest man of the two wore number 
sevens, while the larger individual could not get along with less 
than number twelves. There was another house, in the vicinity of 
the old Franklin Theatre, where a motley crowd used to assemble 
three nights in the week, and raffle for poultry. The proprietor was 
a fat man, and one of the most thrifty and prudent individuals I 
ever met with. His percentage was a quarter out of each pot, and 
a chance, so that he generally had all the money and most of the 
poultry about two o'clock in the morning. The man who attended 
to the game for him was called " Singing Bill," and, as he shared 
with the landlord, he wore the glossiest hat and finest clothes that 
the tailor could make up. Something occurred to close the game, 
and " Singing Bill," having plenty of leisure time, commenced 
bucking against the " tiger," and such was his hard fortune, that in 
a month's space his extra wardrobe had dwindled down to a pair of 
shoe strings. Talking of shoe strings puts me in mind of Chauncey 

J , one of the first confidence men of the age. A comrade, one 

day, came into the Tapis Franc, where Chauncey was engaged at 
the game of " faro." " How do you get along, old top ?" said his. 
friend. 

" Splendid," says Chauncey ; "I have just run a shoe string up 
to ten dollars." 

The next deal the cards ran rough, and his friend again inquired, 
" How do you fight your men now, Chauncey ?" 

" Rocky," was the reply ; " I have just run ten dollars down to a 
shoe string." 

The Mercer and Greene street eating houses are patronized by the 
girls of the town and their lovers. They are mostly fitted up with 
private boxes, where those who visit can have a sociable conversa- 
tion all alone by themselves, about the arts and sciences, the drama, 
or any other refreshing subject. The price of each dish is about 
double what it is at Taylor's or Delmonico's. It is about as singu- 
lar that it takes from ten to a dozen damsels to tend the " Rainbow" 
and " Forget-me-not" segar saloons in Canal street, although I am 
willing to bet that the boxe3 in the window are only a stall, and 
that, with so many clerks, they never have more than a thousand 
segars on hand. 

Along the avenues, private box saloons can be found at most of 
the street corners above Sixteenth street (I've worked in several of 
'em, and know the ropes). Such bewitching creatures, of sweet 
seventeen, as I have seen going into them places with wenerable 
old gentlemen, as any outsider would have taken to be their re- 
spectable papas, when, in fact, they was everything else ; why, I 



OUR ALL NIGHT EATING HOUSES. 19 

couldn't begin to count 'em in a week of Sundays. I can't say that 
the damsels are delicate, as a general thing. I recollect once serv- 
ing a charming young creature, who had a bald-headed old fogy in 
tow, with six pigs' feet and two plates of pickled tripe — I don t say 
nothing of the whiskey skins she punished in the meantime. They 
was beyond counting. 

The gentleman's bill was only seven dollars, and he had the au- 
dacity to grumble ; I had half a mind to punch his wenerable head, 
and I'll bet I could have licked him if he had been twice as old. 
The lovely creature quieted him by saying the bill was just right 
(bless her pretty pigs' feet appetite), and he went oif with her like 
a lamb to the slaughter. I think, as the son of a sea-cook, I am no 
disgrace to the profession, and I can cut, carve and come again with 
the best of 'em; why, I even paid something handsome to attend 
lectures on the art of cooking, given by a French Count in distress, 
who was obliged to distribute his education in that manner, at a 
quarter a pop. What he told us about the noble Rum-ones and their 
happy appetites astonished us more than any Twenty-seventh street 
Ghost ever could, you can bet your pile on that. He told us about 
one Vittleus, who hankered after nightingales' tongues and peacocks' 
brains to such an alarming extent, that he run through twenty mil- 
lions in the course of a year. And then there was Hell Gobleus, 
who made the people do all their work in the night time and sleep 
through the day. (Bully, that, noble Rum-one, for the night sa- 
loons), and who eat himself up in three years, for he didn't have a 
single nickle left to buy a red herring. 

There is a heap of difference, Mr. Author, in eating-house cus- 
tomers, and as the saying is, " when one is in Turkey, he has to do 
as the Turkeys do." I picked up a flunkey's education, though I do 
say it myself, astonishing quick ; I knowed, as soon as my eye was 
fixed on a gentleman with a red neckacherf, yaller spotted vest and 
a crape around his tile, that if he fancied fish-balls, he would order, 
in the dulcet tones of Mackerelville, a plate of Siamese Twins, to 
the great horror of listening countrymen. Everybody knows that 
pork and beans goes by the name of " woodcock" in the most aris- 
tocratic houses, but I doubt if there are many aware that Hash is 
known to all the rounders as "boned turkey," " corduroy" and 
" West Broadway." " Give us a plate of Tennessee, and be quick 
about it," means nothing more nor less than hot corn bread, and 
" Irish goose" is codfish, baked or boiled. The appearance of night 
eating-houses waries as much, Mr. Editor, as the changes of the 
thermometer. Down Water street way, th& signs are generally 
painted with a spread eagle on one end and a ship on the other. 
Italian images generally say grace over the pig's trotters and pickled 
tripe, and there are lots of pictures around of Black-eyed Susan and 
the Sailor Ashore. In my youthful days of happy innocence, my 
parent and myself used to board at the Water street cellars while 
the ship was being discharged. Among the English houses I have 
occasionally taken a turn as a flunkey, but I can't say that toasted 
cheese and 'alf-and-'alf agreed with my constitution. It would have 
had to have been as strong as that of the United States to stand any 
length of time those red-faced John Bulls with husky voices, who 



80 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

generally take a sociable drink by themselves, and roar out 
" waiter !" when they want a segar-lighter. 

I can't say as Fin partial to lady flunkeys either, and it's worse if 
they are handsome and hare winning' ways. It is astonishing how 
a pair of blue eyes and a waterfall will entice the gents to spread 
theirselves in the way of orders. I know a cove whose ambition 
never soared above corned b:>ef and cabbage with one of my sex, 
that would lavish his money in the most ridiculous manner on oyster 
pje and plum both kinds, whenever he was waited upon by a femi- 
nine. I am sorry to say that the boss took a base adwantage of his 
weakness, and sent the most fascinating crinoline we had on hand 
to take his orders. Flunkeys have their feelings, and mine have 
been hurt on several occasions. I recollect that a young man re- 
quested me, in the hearing of a couple of hundred diners, to drive 
Knottier chicken through his bowl of soup ; and the stale joke of 
diving for a bean is familiar to every flunkey's ear. 

Where do I work now ? why, at a Broadway saloon, bang up on 
the square, and no private boxes. I have risen in the world, and 
the rolling stone has begun to gather a small morsel of moss. Sarah 
Jane is a phantom that has nearly vanished from my memory. I am 
in with a policeman on our beat, and the other day he said he was 
happy to inform me that Jenkins had taken a six months' residence 
on Blackwell's Island as an intolerable wag-rant. Cuss him ! No I 
wont ; 'tis noble to forgive. I have cut the Duke of Kaciac, and 
the Count Nocouut is doing five years at Sing Sing for 'Happing a 
till." Coming, sir— yes, sir — Beef a la mode, spring chicken, She- 
der crabs, Porter House steak, large bottle of Heidsick. There's 
an order for a small tea party, and the way we do business at our 
saloon. When I receive such commands, Mr. Author,! am thankful 
to kind fortune that I stand in the proud position of a Flunkey. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PUGILISTS. 

The slang peculiar to the class of " sports" who profess the 
" noble art of self-defence," is almost a dialect in itself, and its roots 
are difficult to trace. For example, it is not easy to guess why the 
tavern to which the^tern pugilist resorts, should be called a 
fi drum," in his linquctyranca. Ho calls his leg3 " pins," and there 
is some obvious comparison in that. His nose is a " conk," hi3 
chest a " bread-basket," his mouth a " potato-trap." In the fol- 
lowing brief account of the fighting man of New York, however, 
and of his nightly haunts, we shall restrict ourself to as little of M3 
dialect as possible, and stick to the good old principle of calling a 
spade a spade. 

Houston street, east of Broadway, has long been a favored spot 
for the proprietor of the " drum" pugilistic, wherein to hang out his 
painted lantern, on which there usually appears the fancy name by 
which his establishment is known. Among the " profession" there 
is a certain aspiration after originality in these fancy names. Ha -lly 



THE PUGILISTS. 81 

a year ago there was a '•'dram" in East Houston street, kept by the 
late Harry Lazarus, the sign-board of which bore the cabalistic for- 
mula, X-10-U-8— or, in plain English, <•' Extenuate;" the transfor- 
mation of which verb into a noun demonstrative of a " drum" is 
rather a puzzler to the inquiring mind. " The Extenuate" camo 
to a calamitous and untimely end. It was but too often the resort 
of self-styled '* pugilists" of the worst and most dangerous class, 
though Harry himself was a well-behaved little fellow, who had 
sufficient confidence in his fistic powers to dispense with' the use of 
" cutlery," as a general thing. One night— or at early morning, 
rather — somewhere about the New Year time, certain of these 
roughs entered the " Extenuate" just as the proprietor was about 
to close up for the night, and one of them, named Barney Friery, 
after a few words of altercation with Harry Lazarus, foully and 
savagely murdered him on the spot, by plunging a knife into his 
neck. This was one of those awful scenes which any man may be 
liable to witness, if his spirit of investigation leads him to explore 
such haunts at the dead hours of the night. Some four or five 
years previous to this, Harry was keeping a " drum" in Chatham 
street. It was about New Years time then, too, when he had re- 
tired, at an early hour in the morning, leaving his barkeeper to 
shut up the place. Just then three or four roughs entered, and 
called for liquor, but the barkeeper refused to supply them with 
any, saying that the bar was closed. Upon this they attacked the 
young fellow, and would probably have killed him had not Harry, 
roused by the noise, made his appearance on the scene. Singling 
out the biggest of the roughs, young Lazarus gave him a slight 
inkling of pugilistic science by knocking out a few of his front 
teeth, in less time than it takes to tell. The cowardly brutes who 
would have killed the barkeeper now tried to make the best of their 
escape, but were all arrested by the police by the time Lazarus had 
'' doubled up" their leader, whose face was a picture when he made 
his appearance in court, next morning. In disposing of the case, 
the police magistrate passed a well-merited encomium on Lazarus 
for the pluck and skill displayed by him in defending his " castle." 

One of the most characteristic places now in the city, perhaps, in 
the way of pugilistic resort, is the house kept by Harry Hill, in 
East Houston street, near Crosby. Hill is an Englishman, who has 
been for some years in this country, and was long known here as 
one of the best wrestlers in the ring. He is rather under the mid- 
dle stature — about five feet seven inches in height, perhaps — very 
heavily built in the shoulders, which are somewhat round, as is 
often the case with wrestlers. We should judge him to be about 
forty years of age. Hill does not wrestle now, owing, we believe, 
to a sprain suffered by him in one of his lcg3. His last contest was 
with Prickett, the New Jersey champion, which, if we remember 
rightly, resulted in a " draw," owing to some disputed point with 
regard to the rules of the " grip." 

On entering Hill's establishment you have to flank a screen, 
which, standing inside the door, opposes your direct entrance. 
Having executed this manoeuvre, you find yourself in a good sized 
room, one side of which is occupied by the bar, which is very well 
fitted up with beer-pumps and all the other means and appliances 



82 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

proper to such depots. Interpersed among the decanters and 
glasses on the bar-shelves are a number of photographs of fighting 
men. and "well-known characters connected with the ring. The side 
of the room opposite the bar is taken up with a number of barrels, 
which impart a cellary appearance of plenty to the scene. There 
are several small tables in the room, on the centre one of which 
most of the sporting and some of the daily papers are to be found. 
On the walls there are many sporting prints of former " mills," and 
portraits of men who travel successfully on their muscle. At night 
most of the tables are occupied by men connected with the ring — 
fighting men, trainers, backers, and sporting men generally. 
Observe that wiry-looking man talking with Harry Hill. He 
would not, probably, weigh more than one hundred and thirty-two 
pounds, if in fighting trim, but he is one of the most scientific 
fighters in the country, and a hard man to tackle. That is "Dooney" 
Harris, an Englishman, who has been in this country some two or 
three years. Notice what a fighting head he has, with eyes far apart 
and sloping upwards, wolf-like, and a strong, hard-set lower jaw. 
One night when we saw him there — it must be a year or two since 
— there sat over at that table, yonder, an awful looking "pug" 
with an enormous head, the facial portion of which was ornamented 
with numerous bumps and gashes in black, blue, and yellow, 
thrown partly into the shade by the slouching brim of his " wide- 
awake" hat. That was Patsey Marley, who had just been defeated 
by Harris, to whose rapid and straight hitting he owed the decora- 
tions of his countenance. There was high altercation going on in 
circles distributed about the bar-room. Harris appeared to be par- 
ticularly excited, and we soon found that the trouble had arisen out 
of the application to him, by Marley, on the morning of the fight, 
of the epithet " duffer." Marley asserted that by this objectionable 
sobriquet Harris was known in English pugilistic circles. Harris repu- 
diated the epithet. He would not be called "Duffer" Harris. _ He 
would punch the head of anybody who would apply to him an epithet 
so opprobrious. He meandered about the room, with his hands in his 
trousers' pockets, seeking for somebody who would be rash enough 
to " duffer" him, but, as" no such ill-advised person happened just 
then to be on hand, he soon subsided to a cigar and a glass of ale, 
and harmony was restored. 

Hill is frequently selected as stake-holder, when a fight is on the 
tapis, and, on these occasions, his place is usually a scene of much 
bustle at night. When the preliminaries of a fight have been ar- 
ranged, it is customary to get up a sparring match, for the benefit of 
the men who are going into training. Mozart Hall, on Broadway, 
used to be the regular place for these sparring exhibitions, but the 
" pugs" of late have deserted it and sought other fields, a hall in 
Forsyth street being now the scene generally selected by them for 
their " little mills." It is at one of these glove-matches that the 
" fancy"' are to be seen in all their glory. Tickets are usually sold 
for half a dollar, and you will observe, as you go in, large posters 
at the door of the place, setting forth a programme of the sports of 
the evening. When the place of performance is built like a theatre 
— as old Mozart Hall is — a barrier of posts and ropes is placed 
along the front of the stage, which thus assumes somewhat the ap- 



THE PUGILISTS. 83 

pearance of a " ring." The benches are usually pretty well filled 
with men of the P. R. type— some of them what may be called 
" swell roughs," while a great majority of them are roughs of a 
lower class, unwashed, cravatless, and clad in dirty red shirts, long, 
coarse black frock coats, with trousers to match, and heavy cow- 
skin boots, on which the art of the boot-black doe? not seem ever 
to have thrown a transient gloss. The swell rough wears better 
clothes. He affects a neglige style of apparel : shirt, loose sac'c, 
of thick woolen stuff; trousers of a similar material, generally of a 
yellow tan-color, cut excesssvely pegtop, and having a couple of 
pearl buttons strched on the outside seam, at the ankle. His hat is 
of tbe stovepipe pattern, with a verry narrow brim, and so shiny 
that it looks as if Bridget had mistaken it for a joint of a stove- 
pipe, and "done it over" with black-lead. He wears green Kid 
gloves, and his cravat is frequently barred with all the colors of the 
rainbow. His hair is closely trimmed, and so is his moustache, 
which is invariably of a purply black hue, even though Nature may 
have ordained it to be a fiery red. 

The part of usher, or master of the ceremonies, at these meetings, 
has been held, for many years past, by a well-known character 
called " Old Bill Tovee ." Mr. Tovee's nationality we should judge 
to be English, with a suspicion of Irish extraction. Externally, 
Mr. Tovee is not a very pugilistic looking person. He is somewhat 
advanced in years, and wears a certain agricultural look that im- 
presses the beholder with ideas of peace rather than of war. His 
tall old " beaver" hat is generally much the worse for wear, and is 
worn at a careless angle upon his occiput. His clothes are of no 
particular fashion, but they look as if they had seen better days, 
and may be described in general terms as " rusty." Mr. Tovee has 
had a large experience of ring matters, and his decision on knotty 
points involving " foul" or " fair," is generally looked upon with 
respect by the sporting characters. In matters pugilistic he has his 
own theories, and is a great advocate for glove fights, that is, not for 
sparring matches proper, but for regular hammer-and-tongs prize 
fights, iu which the combatants have their " mawleys" encased in 
the " mufflers." How far old Mr. Tovee may be influenced in his 
promulgation of this theory, by the fact that he manufactures, or at 
least furnishes, such articles for the P. R., we have no means of 
jndging ; but it is certain that glove fights have not as yet become 
popular with the " fancy," to whom, if anything, the addition of 
brass " knuckle-dusters" would be more acceptable than any in- 
vention calculated to mollify a blow. 

As the time for commencing the exercises of the evening ap- 
proaches, sundry young men -some of them mere boys — maybe 
seen straggling down among the benches and making their way on 
to the stage, behind which they at once disappear. These are some 
of the novices and aspirants, by whose efforts the spectators are 
shortly to be edified. Jokes are levelled at them from the benches, 
as they get over or under the ropes, and if one of them happens to 
get tripped up in crossing the barrier, great is the hilarity indulged 
in at his expense. Presently the spectators grow impatient, and 
there is a great stamping of' feet, on which old Mr. Tovee makes 
his appearance on the stage, and, announcing that the sports of the 



84 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

evening will commence with a set-to between, say, Larry McCarthy 
and Jem Kerrigan, introduces these young sports to the public, and 
retires to the back of the stage. In all the sparring between the 
tirst two or three couples who set-to, there is usually more fight 
than science displayed, and the spectator who comes expecting to 
witness real art is generally somewhat disappointed. But there 
will be something better by and by. To vary the amusements, 
old Mr. Tovee now announces that Mr. Harry Hill has kindly vol- 
unteered to exhibit his dexterity in playing with the Indian clubs, 
two sets of which are produced upon the stage, one pair weighing 
twelve pounds each, the other thirty-five. These last are tremen- 
dous looking bludgeons, and their appearance produces a sensa- 
tional buzz among the benches. Mr. Hill now makes his bow, and, 
taking up the smaller pair of clubs, walks with them to the centre 
of the stage. He has divested himself of coat and waistcoat, and 
the sleeves of his checked shirt are rolled up so as to show the red 
flannel one underneath. Eound his strong loins a handkerchief is 
loosely tied, merely to carry out the traditional idea of " girding 
up." He plays with the twelve pound clubs for a while, just as 
any ordinary person might with a pair of tenpins, and his evolu- 
tions with them are very graceful and easy. Then he pauses for a 
while, and, seizing one of the big clubs, poises it for a moment high 
in the air, after which he sends it whirling round his head and over 
his shoulders with a dexterity and strength that never fail to elicit 
shouts of applause. Catching up the other club, he now makes 
both gyrate in duplicate movements that require great exercise of 
skill and muscular strength. The exertion is evidently very great, 
and when Hill lays down the clubs and retires, you are likely to 
think that he has contributed his full quota to the sports of the 
evening. When the applause elicited by this feat has subsided, 
somebody in the boxes espie3 a well-known character leaning over 
one of the back benches, whom he salutes loudly with a " How are 
you, King of Clubs?" and there is immediately a torrent of " hi I 
hi !" from all parts of the house. The personage alluded to is a 
very important one among the sporting fraternity, for whom he 
manufactures those clubs, which have nearly superseded dumbells 
in the gymnasiums and schools of muscle. Sim Kehoe — for that is 
his name — is a shortish, muscular man, of wiry build, and with a 
face decidedly of the Hibernian fighting cast. His appearance by 
day must be familiar to many, as he traverses the highways and 
byways, with a pair, or sometimes two pair, of lignum vita blud- 
geons upon his shoulders. Sim is of Irish origin, having been 
brought to this country while very young. He has worked at 
several things in his time, but has finally settled down into his pre- 
sent occupation, out of which he bids fair to realize a fortune, 
now that physical training is receiving the attention it deserves. 

The next introduction, by old Mr. Tovee, is probably young Dick 
Hill, son of the great clubbist. This versatile young gentleman, 
who may be about nine or ten years old, is also an adept with the 
clubs, a light pair of which he swings with much grace and adroit- 
ness. He is also of a dramatic turn, and makes his appearance in 
the course of the evening in a negro character, with corked face, 
and the collar of his striped shirt reaching to his temples, in which 



THE PUGILISTS. 8fj 

guise he treats the audience to a negro song and dance. "When he 
runs off the stage after this performance, you will note how like his 
father he is in build. 

The wind-up of the evening is always a set-to between two ath- 
letes of real science and ' k grit" — for instance, Bill Davis and Jim 
Dunn — who, on such occasions, generally appear in regular ring 
costume — light undershirt, drawers, and long stockings, with laced 
ankle-boots. This set-to always excites intense interest, and the 
straight hits and quick stops are followed by thunders of applause. 
On cne of these occasions, we remember that the combatants were 
the redoubtable Joe Coburn and the burly Mike Norton, known in 
ring circles as " Crow." To another " ring" has the latter trans- 
ferred his abilities now, for is not u Crow" Norton Alderman of the 
Third District, and, not unirequently, occupant of the magisterial 
bench ? Thus it is that virtue ever hath its reward 

Among the other places of resort to which the pugilists tend 
when the shades of night prevail, we will mention the hostelrie 
kept by Izzy Lazarus, in Centre street, near Grand. The house is 
called the Eagle Tavern, if we remember rightly. It is painted 
green on the outside, and the swinging sign at the door is a good 
portrait of the obese host, in the character of Sir John Falstaff, 
which he could easily make up " without stuffing," to use a theatri- 
cal expression. Izzy Lazarus is an Englishman, and, as his name 
suggests, of the ancient Hebrew race. He is of shortish stature, 
but of such immense girth as to weigh something over three hun- 
dred pounds. On entering his bar-room, you will observe an oil 
painting, representing a young man in fighting trim and attitude, 
naked from the waist up. and displaying good physical develop- 
ments. This is a portrait of Izzy, himself, whose fighting weight in 
those days of his triumph was no more than one hundred and 
thirty-two pounds. Who would think it, to look at him now ? Many 
a time we have seen Izzy, however, in his present obese condition, 
" sail in" with the gloves, after a fashion that made his younger and 
slimmer antagonist look out for himself. The most scientific spar- 
ring we remember to have seen in this country, used to be displayed 
in the provincial exhibitions given by him with his two boys, Harry 
and Johnny, both of them, at that time, light weights of great skill 
and promise. A feature connected with the " drum" of Izzy Laza- 
rus is the "free and easy" held there on certain nights cf the week. 
lt Robert Smith, Chairman ; Charley Carson will face him," is the 
announcement on a card of one of these entertainments, that now lies 
before us. The " free and easy" here is usually a very crowded af- 
fair, at which some good singing i3 to be heard, and a great deal of 
bad. Through a hazy atmosphere of beer and smoke, the ponder- 
ous form of the host himself may often be seen, as, with his head 
thrown back, he rolls out from his enormous chest some ditty pic ied 
up by him in other days and latitudes. Some of the best-known 
men of the pugilistic ring are usually to be seen of an evening at 
the hostelrie of stout old Izzv. 

Joe Coburn, who tried so hard to get up a fight with the English 
champion, Jem Mace, but failed in the attempt, keeps the " White 
House," in Grand street, a place to which the members of the P. Ii. 
very frequently resort. The bar-room is a large and well-fitted one, 



86 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

with portraits of the host himself, and of other sporting men. Co- 
burn is a north of Ireland man, tall, and of exceedingly athletic 
build. His face is not distinctly that which usually denotes the 
fighting man, because the bridge of his nose remains in the condi- 
tion in which nature originally built it — a thing rare in the tribe of 
Pug. Nevertheless there is, in his small eye, the same lurking 
gleam of pugnacity that we have observed in many four-footed 
creatures of rapacious instincts. Joe's well-known pugnacity causes 
good order to reign in his bar of a night, as he has a rather uncere- 
monious way about him with brawlers. Outside, his proclivities 
get him into many a scrape. Not long since, we visited his '• drum" 
one night, and, not seeing him behind his bar, made inquiries about 
him. He was laid up, we were informed, with a very bad hand, 
brought on by his knuckles coming In contact with the teeth of 
some individual obnoxious to him. Rats and other Vermin are said 
to have a poisonous quality in their teeth, and it is just possible that 
the gentleman smitten on the mouth by Mr. Joseph Coburn might 
have been properly classed with such. There are a good many 
" vermin" in the haunts frequented by the New York pugilists at 
night. 



CHAPTER XVH. 

THE '''MEDIUMS." 

Some of the persons who come under the above heading pluralize 
their denomination into media — which is surprisingly correct Latin 
for people whose English is oftener ungrammatical than otherwise. 
For ourselves, we prefer to use the word in its English form, and 
shall continue to do so, even should a committee of pedagogues 
wait upon us with the information that alba is the proper plural of 
the universally adopted word album. 

Well, then, the so-called mediums of New York City are so nu- 
merous and so widely distributed, that a good-sized book, not to 
speak of a brief chapter, would hardly be equal to the dealing out 
of the justice that is due to them. We have no reason to doubt that 
there are many, many persons whose profession of the doctrine of 
Spiritualism is sincere, for it would be far too sweeping an assertion 
to declare that all who believe in the " new religion" must necessa- 
rily be impostors. In its religious aspect, the subject is not one for 
treatment in these pages ; but in the wide field cleared by it for im- 
position and quackery of all sorts, we see a corner for our " Night 
Side," and to this we shall confine ourselves. 

The public at large know but little of the numerous seances held 
nightly in private circles, for such bracing exercises as " manifesta- 
tions" and " tests." There is more money spent upon delusions of 
this kind in New York than we should like to name a figure for — 
numerous wealthy persons, of jaded minds, having in their pay im» 
postors of the " medium" stripe, who make large incomes by prey- 
ing on the soft brains of the credulous. To such circles as these 
admission is obtainable by special invitation only, and, as we have 
never yet had such a courtesy extended to us, we shall furnish our 



THE MEDIUMS. 81 

readers with but one peep at a seance of the kind, which was pre- 
sented to us by one whom we shall designate by the initial "N." 

The scene lies in a large and elegantly furnished mansion in a 
street not far from Madison Square. The time is about ten o'clock 
at night, and there are some fifty guests assembled to see and hear 
the wonderful performances of a young man who professes to Lave 
intercourse with the spirit world, and who is a protege of the mas- 
ter of the house. Most of the persons assembled are believers in 
Spiritualism, but among them are half a dozen skeptics who come to 
look sharp after humbug, and are determined not to be imposed upon. 

One end of the large drawing-room has been fitted up witli a lec- 
ture desk, and the lecturer of the evening is the protege of whom 
we have already spoken — a young man of some five or six and 
twenty, fair and delicate in complexion as a girl, and wearing a 
slight blonde moustache. His lecture, which consists of the com- 
mon-places generally delivered by the itinerant professors of the oc- 
cult science, is spoken with a good show of earnestness, also with a 
decidedly English accent, the docking of the aspirator being as con- 
spicuous in some words as their laying on is in others. But the lec- 
ture is only a prologue to the entertainment. The real feature of 
the evening is a performance on the cornet a pistons, for which pur- 
pose the lecturer announces that he has secured the aid of no less a 
familiar than the spirit of the late Herr Koenig ! 

The arrangements for the performance were to be in this wise. 
The lecturer was to be tied with a rope to the arm-chair in which 
he sat, by a committee of three gentlemen selected from the party. 
The cornet was to be placed on the floor at a distance of several 
feet from him, and between him and the audience. Then the gas 
was to be shut entirely off, the master of the house pledging himself 
that it should not be turned on again until the lecturer himself gave 
a preconcerted signal. All this was done in order and to the satis- 
faction of the committee. The instrument was then handed around 
for inspection. It was a superb one of English manufacture, richly 
mounted in silver, but in no way differing, as to make, from the or- 
dinary cornet. When all was ready the lights were put out, and, 
after a minute of breathless expectation, during which a pin might 
have been heard to fall, the low, dulcet cadence of the '* Bridal 
Waltzes" — one of Kcenig's most masterly pieces — thrilled upon the 
assemblage with a sense akin to fear. The tone and the execution 
were such as to leave no doubt on the minds of most of those pres- 
ent that the instrument was touched by no earthly lips. Ladies 
were sobbing in their pocket-handkerchiefs. Strong men were pale 
and felt a lifting tendency at the roots of their hair. The strain 
ceased ; a low whistle was heard, and, in a moment, the apartment 
was again in a blaze of light. There sat the lecturer, looking very 
much exhausted, as one who had endured a terrible dream. Tied 
hand and foot he sat, with every knot just where it had been put, 
and every coil of the rope. His wrists and ankles were blue with 
the strain, and it was only after swallowing a draught of iced water 
that he recovered the use of his speech. The excitement among 
the party was intense, and " N" declares his belief that more than 
one young lady present would have married the bewitching medium 
on the spot, if he had only given her the chance. 



88 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

But " N v was not so •well satisfied in his mind about the Kcenisj 
performance as many of the young ladies and most of the ol i gen- 
tlemen were. Nevertheless, he expressed such gratification with it, 
that the gentleman of the house invited him to attend a repetition 
of it, which was to be given a few evenings after. This invitation 
"W J gladly accepted, meanwhile revolving in his mind some plan 
for testing the spiritual powers of the fascinating young modiimi — 
who, by the by, protested that he never could blow so much as a 
single note upoia the cornet. 

When the evening of the performance arrived, " N" managed, as 
a skeptic, to have himself put on the committee. The cornet was 
handed round for inspection as before, and " N" himself placed it 
on the floor at its proper distance from the medium. The same de- 
licious strains were heard as upon the previous evening. The lights 
shone out again, and " N," amid the murmurs of applause that 
arose from the assembly, took the young medium by the hand as if 
to congratulate him, and led him forward. What was the astonish- 
ment of the spectators when they saw that the fair moustache of the 
fascinating young adventurer had turned to a jetty blackness, and 
that he had something like a black tuft on his lower lip ! "N," 
cruel, practical joker that he was, had rubbed the mouthpiece of 
the cornet with a little moistened lampblack, which fully accounted 
for " the milk in the cocoa-nut ;" and now, drawing a small looking 
glass from his pocket, he held it before the performer who, far from 
being abashed at his detection, brazoned the thing out, and, in an 
impromptu lecture, attributed the affair to the intervention of evil 
spirits. It might be supposed that the master of the house where 
this circumstance took place would have been disabused by it of 
any confidence in his chosen medium, whom, however, he continued 
to maintain, in blind faith, for some time after, until the fellow swin- 
dled him out of a large sum of money and decamped from the city. 
This imposter was stated to have been a deserter from the band of 
some English regiment, and he has since been seen in the orchestra 
of some theatre or circus on the western circuit, playing upon the 
instrument which he handled with nearly the skill of a Kcenig. 

So much for a seance among the spiritualists of the " upper ten." 
Now let us take a turn among the professionals who " do their spir- 
itings" after a fashion not quite so refined. 

Starting from a central part of Broadway, we take a turn west- 
ward, which leadi us, in a short time, to a street bearing a reputa- 
tion the reverse of saintly. This house — a brick one, of tolerably 
respectable appearance — must be the one we are in search of, for 
pasted on the window there is a printed slip, containing the name of 
a certain family of mediums, who profess to do strange things by 
the aid of spirits. There is a man standing in the doorway, and he 
ushers us into a small room on the ground floor, where he requests 
us to seat ourselves and remain until the performance commences. 
The room is very poorly furnished, and on the walls there are three 
or four cheap lithographic portraits of the mediums who rent the 
place. Some eight or ten persons have already arrived, and are 
seated about the room, looking at each other with inquiring eyes. 
Some of them are women — one young and comely, the others elderly 
and plain. There is a tall, thin man of fifty, with a frowsy beard, 



THE MEDIUMS. 89 

a hollow chest and a very bad cough. Presently this man opens a 
conversation with another near him. lie says that he has been 
a member of many sects in his time, and came to be*an atheist at 
last, but that the manifestations of Spiritualism have lately con- 
vinced him that he has a soul. He has gone through all the myste- 
ries of table-rapping and summoning *• spirits from the vasty deep," 
and is in great conceit with himself about a luminous hand that ap- 
peared to him one night in his own house — " a hand with a hawlo of 
light about it/"' as he expresses it himself. The good-looking young 
lady shudders at this, and says she would not, for the world, see 
such things if she was alone. A skeptical gentleman asks the one 
with the cough whether he had touched the luminous hand, to see 
whether it was attached to an arm and that to a body. He answers 
that he had not, because he did not consider it safe to tamper with 
such things. There is a provincial-looking man of the party, who i3 
much inclined to believe in spiritual agency, although he has seen 
but little, as yet, of the wonders worked by the mediums. He has 
been posting himself on the subject of necromancy and legerde- 
main, and narrates several anecdotes about the Hindoo and Chinese 
jugglers, whose performances, he thinks, must be attributed to the 
aid of spirits. We take the liberty of asking him whether he had 
ever witnessed the performances of Herman or Heller, or any of the 
great professors of legerdemain, who repudiate all connection with 
occult science. He never had, but he has no doubt that they work 
their wonders by Spiritualism, and deny it in order to enhance their 
dexterity. 

With discussions such as these half an hour passes, while some 
arrangements are going on in an adjoining room. A few more peo- 
ple come dropping in, but the party does not exceed sixteen at any 
time of the evening. Presently a thin, sallow man comes in, and, 
going round to each person, like the conductor in a horse-car, col- 
lects the entrance fee, which is no less than a dollar a head. Ihis 
done, a sliding door is thrown open, and the spectators are ushered 
into the next room, where chairs have been placed for them in rows. 
A rope is extended across the room in front of the chairs, so as to 
keep a space clear for the operations of the mediums. Against the 
wall, at the further end of this space, there stands a tall cabinet, 
somewhat like a wardrobe with two doors, and lying about the floor 
arc some musical instruments — a guitar, a violin, a tambourine and 
a drum. On looking at a printed programme of the evening's exer- 
cises, we find a promise that " there will be good instrumental 
music at each seance," the fulfillment of which is present in a young 
man with a fiddle, who represents the orchestra, only he sits with 
his face instead of his back to the audience. ^ He is a very pale 
youth, with a sleepy eye, a succulent expression of mouth, and a 
fine, thick crop of light hair. His appearance does not indicate in- 
tellect, but he is by no means such a fool as he looks, as his interlo- 
cution with the audience, and his ready repartee will shortly show. 

The thin, sallow man, who calls himself a " Doctor," and the pro- 
ceeding, in general, a " see-ants, j; now makes a short address to the 
audience, requesting them to select from their number a committee 
of two gentlemen and one lady— the former to bind hand and foot, 
to seats in the cabinet, the two fraternal mediums, v/hose sister, also 



90 NIGHT SIDE OP NEW YORK. 

a medium, is to have the same office performed upon her by the 
lady. The three mediums now appeared upon the scene, and duck- 
ing under the rope, take their place upon the floor. The two young 
men are dark-browed, heavy-looking fellows, of the Bowery bar- 
keeper stamp. The " lady medium" is not a very fascinating per- 
son. She is very untidy, not to say " dowdy," as to her toilet, and 
her hair, which is cut in a short crop, after a fashion common to wo- 
men who have " rights," is frowsy and uncared for. To do her jus- 
tice, she seems to be a little ashamed of the whole business, and 
awaits her turn to be tied with a very sheepish air. Two respecta- 
ble-looking gentlemen from the small audience consent to act on 
the committee, and a well-dressed lady joins them, and the tying 
commences. As soon as the committee are satisfied that they have 
made the three mediums perfectly fast to their seats in the cabinet, 
and rendered them powerless to move or assist each other, the in- 
struments of music are placed on the floor of the cabinet, the doors 
of which are then bolted by the " Doctor," who is the showman of 
the occasion, the light is turned down to a low degree of dimness, 
and the audience wait in breathless expectation for the " manifesta- 
tions" to begin. After a minute or so, a fearful racket is heard 
within the mystic press. There is a horrible twanging of the 
guitar, accompanied by a din of drum, tambourine and cymbals. 
Then a " spirit-hand," holding one of these instruments, is hurriedly 
thrust out of a little curtained window near the top of the cabinet, 
and as hurriedly withdrawn. For a " spirit-hand," it seems to have 
a good deal of material dirt upon it, and bears a curious resem- 
blance, so far as we can judge at a cursory glance, to some of the 
hands that were tied with ropes just now. The old gentleman who 
saw the luminous hand in his own house, is rather discontented with 
this manifestation, and inquires of the fiddler why the hands that 
appear from the window are not properly lighted up with a 
" hawlo." For a reply to this the fiddler refers him to the " Doctor," 
who states that the phenomena are apt to be intractable and various, 
but that " hawlos" have, ere now, been manifested through these 
same mediums. While the subject of hands is up, however, the fid- 
dler volunteers some statements respecting his experiences at these 
i: seances." Hs says that a hand has reached out and deposited a 
tambourine on the head of a person standing at a distance of more 
than six feet from the cabinet. 

" Don't that argue that we take larger forms upon ourselves when 
we go into the other world ?" asked the man who was versed in 
Hindoo necromancy. 

li It argues that mediums are built on the principle of Pharaoh's 
Serpents," suggests the voice of a skeptic among the audience. 

The ;i Doctor" and the fiddler both cast very uneasy glances at 
this person, who looks as if he didn't think much of the perform- 
ance, in a general way. There are a few more " manifestations," 
all so clumsily executed, that it is surprising how some twelve or 
fourteen of the persons there present seem to be impressed with 
them, and actually " ask for more." 

A large business is done by the healing mediums and clairvoy- 
ants, who have their nightly seances at various places in the city. 
Let us take a turn into one of them. 



THE MEDIUMS. 91 

It is in a central quarter of the city. Wo go up a flight of steps, 
and enter a little boxecl-off room, where a young man asks us lor 
ten cents, having satisfied him with which magniGcent sura, he tells 
us to walk into the ball. This is a long, low room, with close rows 
of chairs extending through the greater portion of its length. In 
the clear space at the further end of the room there is a reading- 
desk. A poster on the wall, containing certain rule? of the plaoe, 
has a business air about it, for it is signed by a " President," and 
contains allusions to an " Actuary." There are already about fifty 
persons in the room when we enter, and their number is soon in- 
creased, probably to a hundred or more. It is a very long while 
before symptoms of beginning the evening's exercises are displayed, 
and murmurs of impatience are beginning to stir among the audi- 
ence. At last a man appears at the desk, so suddenly that we al- 
most think he must have emerged from beneath it. He is a pale 
man, with that druggy complexion common to those who compound 
the pills, the potions and the bolus. Without delay he opens his 
address to the audience by stating that a celebrated lady medium 
is to address them to-night, but that she is not yet " under control," 
which accounts for the delay. Then, with a certain degree of flu- 
ency, though in language occasionally ungrammatical, the pale man 
proceeds to deliver a discourse upon the benefits of Spiritualism iu 
general, but, more particularly, with regard to the miracles per- 
formed by it. He reads the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and 
says that these mendacious persons were struck down by the agency 
of Spiritualism. He expresses respect for the Bible, but thinks 
himself, or any of us, quite capable of writing an addition to it, and 
makes light of' the prohibitory edict on that head. In the course of 
his remarks he alludes, in terms of glowing eulogy, to a certain 
physician of this city, — one who made himself very conspicuous a 
few years ago by professing to cure disease by imposition of hands, 
or imposition of some kind. To this practitioner he accords powers 
equal to those accorded to certain saintly personages in the days of 
old. He then refers to the probable arrival of Asiatic cholera 
among us, and this reminds him that he has a preventive for it 
which is warranted to cure the disease in every case, if taken in 
time, and which parties can obtain on application at this hall. He 
offers to forfeit one hundred dollars for every failure to effect a 
cure — that is, if the physic has been taken in time, mind. He nar- 
rates a very thrilling story aboat the famous doctor who professes 
to cure by touching, telling how he was once sent up to Blackwell's 
Island by his own "brother — that is, to the Lunatic Asylum on Black- 
well's Island — and how he made his escape from that stronghold 
through the aid of Spiritualism. The spirits told him to saw through 
the window bars, and he did it with a knife, which seems rather bad 
for the vigilance of keepers at Blackwell's Island. xVfter a very 
long address, interspersed with such anecdotes, the druggy man 
says : " The lady medium is now under control, and will address 
you." On this, an elderly female rises from her seat in the front 
row, and walks into the space near the reading-desk, with her head 
very much thrown back. When she faces the audience, we perceive 
that her eyes are closed. She raises her hands alternately to her 
brow, withdrawing them suddenly with a downward motion, as if 



02 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

wiping off perspiration or brushing insects away. Then she gives 
several convulsive jerks with her month which do not improve her 
attractiveness, having cbnc all which in a very low comedy manner, 
she breaks out into a long anil vapid discourse, the sentiments con- 
tained in which arc supposed, of course, to proceed from the spirits, 
of whom she is only the mouthpiece, or verbal agent. It does not 
strike its that there is anything new in her arguments, nor in her 
eloquence of a kind to entrance, on which account we think wc 
have had quite enough for our ten cents, and we take our departure. 
On our way out, however, certain things occur to us in the little 
boxed-up room. There are several printed posters on the wail — 
advertisements of various patent medicines, of which it is not ne- 
cessary that we should give the names. We ask the young man at 
the door the name of the druggy man who has just addressed the 
meeting, and observe that it coincides with that of the patentee of 
the medicines. We are further informed that the druggy man is the 
President of the hall, or institution, or whatever it may be. All 
this is very suggestive, and some persons might be apt to think they 
" smelt a rat" in the business. The young man at the door wonders 
that we are going away so soon, and says that several other distin- 
guished lady mediums have yet to address the meeting — among them 
one to whom he rather airily and irreverently refers as " Frenchy." 
And so, taking things altogether as we have described thorn, you 
can form a pretty true idea of what nightly goes on in New York 
City for the entertainment of people who delight in " manifesta- 
tions." 



CHxlPTER XVIII. 

THE LAIRS OF MISERY AND CRIME. 

The question must sometimes force itself upon inquiring minds. 
t; Where on earth do the squalid wretches, to be seen everywhere in 
our streets — the rag-pickers and such like— make their abodes?"' 

We would not recommend the inquirer to resolve himself into a 
committee of one, and attempt, unattended, to explore the mysteries 
of those reeking districts in which misery lies huddled with crime, 
amid the offal of such localities as the Fourth and Sixth Wards. 

Wc determined to visit ihem, and so pushed up Cha' ham street, 
and soon disappeared in the gloomy and filthy Five Points region. 
Along wet and broken sidewalks ; through streets whose putrescent 
odors were revolting ; past houses, whose feeble-looking lights, in 
dilapidated windows, gave the whole precinct a decayed and sickly 
aspect ; past hideous and drunken women, who saluted one with in- 
vitations that it seemed it had required a demon seven times damned 
to accept ; past groups of little boys, a few of them tugging at the 
stumps of segars that they had picked up somewhere in the street 5 
past crowds of girls, some quarreling and shouting, and others play- 
ing — yes, even there, among the heaps of vile refuse that poisoned 
the air and overlaid the middle of the streets — playing and laughing 
merrily ; past knots of men, with hang-dog and most jaily looks ; 
past corruption and pestilence in every form — as liquids, as solids, 



THE LAIRS OF MISERY AND CRIME. 93 

r.nd as human beings — amazed that such festering foulnesses should 
be suffered to remain so near to our marble palaces of trade. We 
walked as fast as the slippery stones and the obstructions that we 
met would suffer us to go. 

We called at the station-house (o see Captain Jourdan. Not in. 

l: Call to-morrow evening, at seven o'clock." 

We did call, and we saw the Captain. 

" Would the Captain allow a policeman to go round with me to 
the 'slums' and lodging-cellars?" 

The name of a journal of which we are an occasional contributor 
secured us this favor. 

" At what hour V 

'• Eleven or twelve." 

Five hours after, precisely at midnight, we entered the station- 
house again. 

*' Did the Captain leave orders for a policeman to go with me 
round ihe precinct?" 

" I'm your man," said a voice in the corner. A fair-complexioned 
person, dressed in police uniform, jumped up from a little iron seat 
and came forward. 

" You're late, sir," he said. " I expected you at eleven ; but it's 
soon enough." 

Taking a bull's eye, we left on our tour of exploration. 

" Nov/, what would you like to see first ?" said the roundsman, as 
we stepped out into the piercing wintry air. 

We expressed a preference for underground lodging-houses. 

"All right," said the roundsman; "lean show you enough to 
sicken you." 

We went around to the corner of Leonard and Baxter streets, and 
descended about a dozen stairs to the door of a cellar. It had a 
window, broken and dirry. The roundsman rapped at the do:r with 
his club. 

'- Yv r ho's there?" cried a woman's voice. 

" A policeman." 

" What does the policeman want ?" the voice rejoined. 

" Oh, let me in and you'll see," said the roundsman. 

A drunken male voice told the woaiau to open. There was the 
sound of striking a light. 

" Never mind a light," said the roundsman ; " open — I've got 
one I" 

The door opened. A boy of nine or ten, entirely naked, stood 
before us. An unshaven, hard-featured, elderly Irish laborer sat 
bolt upright in bed — naked, too. A woman lay by his side. 

This cellar, like all the rest, was less than eight feet high, and its 
floor was in bad order and extremely filthy. It had once been a 
noted underground hotel, kept by a negro, who has since gone up 
to the Island or to Sing Sing. It had an inner room, which once 
communicated with rooms still further along, which again were con- 
nected with a dark and foul alley. We thought then that the atmo- 
sphere was deadly poisonous, but we remember it now as the best- 
ventilated of these cellars that we visited. For it was a private 
residence, not a lodging-house, now ! 

We regain the street, and a few steps brings us to another den. 



94 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

Entering the hall-way through a doorless entrance, we grope our 
way. aided by the dim light of the lantern, the floor creaking be- 
neath our feet as though it were about to open and swallow us. At 
the end of this passage another doorway, partially barricaded by 
old barrels and bundles of rags, leads to a flight of sieps, descend- 
ing which we find ourselves in a low-roofed cellar, with bare stone 
walls. In this cavern, which is, perhaps, fifteen feet long 'by ten 
broad, there are huddled together at least twenty human beings, of 
both sexes and all ages. The floor seems to be all one bed — a lit- 
tering down of dirty straw such as would not be considered whole- 
some for a pig-pen. Where a glimpse of the floor is perceptible, we 
can see the boards are black and rotten, and the numerous holes in 
them tell plainly of the ingress and egress of swarming rats. 

Crouching round a miserable bit of candle are three figures, occu- 
pied apparently either in sorting rags or in dividing such scraps of 
plunder as might have resulted from their joint efforts during the 
course of the day. The light of the " dip" falls strangely on the 
face of the oldest of the three — a face withered and wrinkled nearly 
out of all semblance to humanity, and with the blaet? shadow of 
something worn upon the head cutting sharply across the upper por- 
tion of it. 

" Man or woman ?" ask we of our guide, who keeps turning his 
lantern here and there upon the closely-assorted miscellany. 

"Couldn't say," was the curt reply; '"pretty much mixed up 
here." 

The other two in the group around the candle were children, ap- 
parently, though it was but from relative size that one might guess 
at this. Their faces were pinched and haggard, and the taugled 
locks of their hair were mingled with shavings and flakes of cotton. 

" They have been rummaging about the wharves/' said our guide j 
" operations in cotton on a small scale." 

Most of the wretched occupants of the floor seemed to be asleep, 
and the effluvium that arose from the hard breathing of the hetero- 
geneous mass brought a choking sensation to thethroat. Querulous 
recriminations passed here and there, couched in expletives " not 
loud but deep." Now the wailing of a child is heard, and our guido 
brings his lantern to bear upon the spot from which it proceeds. 
The light flashes upon a small negro, rocking itself to and fro like 
an old woman, and crooning for the cold as it sits half-naked upon 
the straw. " Cover up that child, some one !" says our guide, in a 
stern voice. A sack is thrown over it by some unseen hand, and it 
becomes a part of the undistinguishable mass that is groveling on 
the floor. 

•'What do they charge for a night's lodging in this den?" aslied 
we. 

" Eight cents, or sometimes ten," replied the guide ; u . prices vary 
here with rents, as elsewhere. The premises belong to a rich man — 
a broker, or such like." 

" John Lane's rum shop" — the policemen call the places gin-mills 
— was next startled by our visit. It was jammed. White boys and 
prostitutes of both races — Celtic and Negro — black men and white 
men, were in the closest fraternity. There was a rush out at the 
back door as soon as McDonnell's blue eyes rested on the women. 



THE LAIRS OF MISEKY AND CRIME. 95 

" Oh," he cried, " you needn't ran ; I ain't a-going to touch you." 

They all knew him, and seemed to have full faith in his word. 
In fact everybody we met knew " Charley." We mentioned the cir- 
cumstance. 

" Yes," said Charley, "most of them have good reason to know 
me. I've sent lots of them up to the Island I" 

Ibis gin-mill is one of the cheapest and most liberally-patronized 
gates to rain in the city. It is also one of the best fitted. Go into 
it in the day time, and you would report it to be clean and respect- 
able, if you would use the last word in relation to such a place in 
any circumstances. Most of the forty or fifty persons here were 
colored. Their lodging-houses are in an alley near by ; and the 
roundsman said they were much cleaner than those of the same class 
of Irish. For nearly all these whites are Irish. " Seems like," said 
another officer, " as if they were a different breed from the other 
Irish ; they're Kerry folks ; hanged if you could dig a hole in them 
with a crowbar deep enough to get any sense into them ; there's no 
reasoning with them ; there's no way of making them keep clean or 
decent but brute force, sir." 

Fitzgerald's gin-mill is on the corner of Baxter and White streets. 
Five or six brutal-looking, bloated, blackened-eyed prostitutes sat 
around the stove ; and one, dead drunk, lay at full length on a 
bench near the door. Four or five young men stood near the bar 
and near the stove. They all knew Charley — the women. All had 
been " up," some more than once. 

Ruin-holes cluster thickly in these squalid and loathsome loca- 
lities. On the opposite corner is Tom Lane's establishment. It is 
much larger than either of the other two. Tom is Jim's brother. 
This place is noted as a resort of thieves, beggars and prostitutes of 
the lowest class. There were upwards of thirty men and women in 
the den when we visited it. The men are of the most brutal and 
beastly type in which humanity is capable of appearing, and most 
of them were more or less under the influence f liquor. The pros- 
titutes are of the worst specimens of their class, having sunk to 
that depth of infamy and degradation to which nearly all arrive at 
last, but from which the early stages of their career often seem so 
far removed. Diseased and filthy, their faces bloated and haggard, 
their eyes dull and bloodshot, they have reached that point where 
further debasement is impossible ; their career of sin is nearly 
ended, and that end is death. There is no hope for them in this 
life, and hopelessness is written on every line of their faces. And. 
yet there are hardly any traces of vital wretchedness 5 it is negative 
mainly ; it is the utter absence of happiness rather than the pres- 
ence of misery that impresses one. 

These women so lost, so fallen, are called " lofters" in ike police 
vocabulary. 

" There," said the roundsman, pointing to a young woman who 
stood near the end of the bar ; " There's the greatest shoplifter in 
the United States, and she's come to this." 

The girl had an intelligent face, keen, black eyes, and her black 
hair hung down in one mass ; she seemed to be delighted with the 
compliment. 

As we were going out, one of the young rowdies made a mocking 



96 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

sound at tha roundsman. " Charley" whistled ; a low whistle an- 
swered. A policeman emerged from the gloom of a neighboring 
house and came forward. 
" Clear them fellows out," said the roundsman. 
The tall man in blue went into the bar-room like a wolf on the 
fold, and there was a sudden scampering of the young row lies. 
Tbey made a simultaneous rush for the door. In their eagerness to 
escape, they blocked each other's way. Meanwhile the policeman 
laid on his club with a vigor which must have left marks on the 
lower region of their bodies. The women laughed. 

" Now let us go over to ' Cow Bay,' " said the roundsman, <•' and 
you will see how they live 'way up Jacob's Ladder ; that's the name 
it goes by. * Cow Bay ' used to be where the House of Industry is 
now, but there's one building still standing, where they keep 
lodgers." 

Jacob's Ladder is an outside stairway, high and steep, which ends 
at a landing so rickeiiy, and in every way so dilapidated, that it ex- 
cites one's wonder that it should be suffered to remain standing. 
You land as high up as the third story would have been. There 
were two doors ; the roundsman rapped at both of them. 
" Who's there ?'' asked a female voice. 
" Open the door, Sase," said the roundsman. 
li Ah ! that's ' Charley,' " returned a voice. 

A little room ; three women in it ; a pan filled with coal cinders 
in the centre of the floor ; one woman on her. haunches, warming 
her hands over it. On a filthy mattrass, with one filthy coverlet over, 
her, lay a woman asleep. No bedstead ; no pillow, no other mat- 
tress. The room — how filthy, how cheerless, how ricketty, no pen 
can describe. The gas from the fire was enough to suffocate us. 

Next room ; a devilish-looking little German woman, half-dressed, 
opened the door. Two men in one bed 5 her husband in the other 
—perhaps htr husband ; filthy, every thing. Had I written about it 
then and there, I would have said extremely filthy ; but there was 
worse to come. 

We go up the narrow, worn-out, winding stairs. We enter — no, 
the writer did not, for he would have vomited had he done so — the 
roundsman entered, and we looked into three of the upper cham- 
bers. In one, under the eaves almost, small and low and slur 1 ting, 
a negro woman had three or four boarders ; she paid a doliar a week 
for rent. Next door there were five or six women huddled near a 
stove. Who is that man lying beside a woman under a heap of rags 
near by them ? 
" They are all prostitutes here," said the roundsman. 
"All five?" 
11 All in this building " 
" And men corae here ?" 
" Oh, yes ; they have no sense of decency." 
One of these women was so frightfully diseased that the foul odors 
of her body was distinguishable above the other fetid odors of the 
room and its inmates, and the fumes of the coal gas ; for in all these 
caverns there are no fire-places. 
A man had died of fever in the attic room opposite only thai 



98 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

morning, and his widow and her children and lodgers were still liv- 
ing there, as filthy aad crowded together as ever. 

" We have to carry corpses from these places sometimes," said 
the roundsman, " and they are crawling !" 

" Are all these women— all of them— of bad character ?" 

" Every one," said the roundsman. We descended. 

" Over there," observed the roundsman, as he pointed to a place 
near by, " over there is where the nigger killed the whitf man some 

time since. They called it S Alley. Would you like to go 

over ?" 

We picked our way over the half-frozen slush, and came to a sta- 
ble-door, or what appeared such, for there was a heap of stable re- 
fuse near it. The roundsman rapped ; by-and-by an old negro man 
appeared, with but one article of clothing on his body — a short, 
thick old man, who made his living by begging. A low, filthy room, 
miserably furnished, but with more in it than the rooms up Jacob's 
Ladder. 

On the floor lay a young man and a woman, on a filthy matfcrass. 
They were man and wife, or, at least, the old man said so. They 
were colored. 

Near by, up one flight of ricketty stairs, we saw a sadder sight 
still. A stove — no, a large open pot only, s'ood in the middle of 
the main room. Three little rooms led out of it. and one of them 
had been a china-closet once. Four squalid and debauched women 
were squatted down near the stove. A mattrass lay on the floor, 
close by the fire, and on it, clasped in each other's arms — not a blan- 
ket nor rug nor coverlid, but only an overcoat over them — two per- 
sons were stretched out. 

' ; Who^s that man ?" asked the roundsman. 

" Dunno." 

<' Who keeps this place ?" 

" Me !" said a debauched creature, clad in unwomanly rags, look- 
ing up at the officer. 

'< How came you here?" said the officer to the man. 

" Coming home — " 

" And this crow picked you up ?" 

" Yes." 

There are men Avho are as low in character as these women ; but 
they can come out of these alleys and dens and redeem themselves ; 
but, once there, a woman can escape in one way only — in o coffin. 

At the corner of Little Water street, where once a missionary liv- 
ed, we went through another house ; this is the abode of the bet- 
ter, or, more properly, the less wretched class. 

" You may make comparisons," said the roundsman. " This is on 
the way down ! They try to keep up a more decent appearance, 
but they all go down'to the cellars on ' Cow Bay ' at last." 

« And then ?" 

" Oh ! then they soon drink themselves to death," said the rounds- 
man. 

We paused a moment, and then the roundsman added — 

" Now, then, let us go over to street, if you would like to 

see the saloons." 

We do not mention the name of this street, because we do not in- 



TIIE LAIRS OF MISERY AND CRIME. 99 

tend to advertise the underground places of bad repute that we vis- 
ited. There are hundreds of the like in the city—all one in charac- 
ter, however different in interior appointments and in external ap- 
pearances. These cellar saloons, vile brothels though they are, 
have no glaring signs and pictures suggestive of tolerated vice, 
which sadden, disgust or tempt the passer-by in Broadway. A 
white painted glass door, or curtained windows, indicate these un- 
derground saloons. 

We entered five or six of them. The atmosphere in them is sti- 
fling — some more, some less so — and occasionally it is sickening. It 
was now about two o'clock in the morning. In one of these cellars 
there were three girls, in another four, in another five. There was 
a bar-room in each. Some of the bar-rooms or saloons were small, 
and othera quite spacious. The back part of the cellar was, in 
every case, divided off into bedrooms, each just large enough for a 
chair and a little table and a double-bed. 

The roundsman opened them. They were not all unoccupied. 
The men were exposed to shame, if they had not got past it. 

The first of these places is kept by a doctor ! He had been the 
regular physician of a number of such collars — for they are so sub- 
ject to hideous maladies that they must needs keep a doctor — and 
this vile curer of vile diseases had calculated the profits of human 
depravity, and leased this den himself. 

In this doctor's den three girls were trying to amuse themselves 
with cards, but it was plain that it was the dreariest of efforts to 
make away with the loitering hours. They are chiefly brazen-faced, 
bloated, debauched young creatures, uncomely, unattractive and 
uneducated. They are mostly Irish. At another cellar there were 
four or five very forward, shameless women. 

" What d'ye want here, Charley ?'' said one of them, as we en- 
tered, " Ar' ye goin' to take us up ?" 

" Oh, no !" said the roundsman ; " I'm only showing a friend 
about," 

" What d'ye want ?" asked the girl, addressing the writer. 

" You know what he wants," replied a young woman whom we 
stood near. 

We looked at her in surprise ; she was the most modest in appear- 
ance, and the only intelligent-looking woman in the room. After 
we had stood four or five minutes, we noticed that she was the only 
person among them who shrank from the coarse familiarity of the 
half-dozen half-drunken, and more than half-brutal fellows in the 
room. The rest of them were unmistakably of un- African descent 
— from the fatherland of the Fenians, every soul of them — but sho 
looked like an American born. 

We kindly inquired where she was born. 

" I'm an American." 

" How long have you been here ?" 

" I've been here less than a week." 

"But you have lived longer than that in these places?" 

" Yes, sir." 

" How long ? I did not come here for the purpose you supposed ; 
speak to me candidly." 

Her manner changed. She was wholly a woman again. 



100 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

" Well, sir," she replied, " I was four or five weeks in a saloon a 
little way along here — six doors from here. Before that I had lived 
a long time out of these places. I was once before about three 
months in them." 

" Why did you first go into them ?" 

s - Drinking, sir, I suppose. That's the truth. But I shall not stay 
long." 

" Why don't you leave at once ?" 

" How can I, sir? Would your wife take me into her family?" 

" But there is great demand, I am told," I retorted, " for Ameri- 
can girls in intelligence offices. Now be honest with me. Is it not 
true that most of the girls here, in these places, don't want to 
work ?" 

" Yes, sir," she said, " it is true. I know I ought not to speak 
against my companions, as I may call them — although I feel myself 
above the company I'm in, and women ought to be more merciful 
in talking about their own sex ; but it is true. But there are some 
who would like to go out, and would go out on a fair chance. But 
what chance is there ?" 

" Do you know the Home ?" 

"Yes, sir ; I do know all about it. But is there any fairness in 
expecting us to go in there three months and live on poor fare, and 
work for nothing? I think some prefer to take their chances to 
get out themselves." 

"But are there no places where girls in your position can apply, 
so that they may be led out ?" 

"I don't know of one," she said. "Mr. knows me, but he 

does not know that I am here ; he would get me a place if I went 
to him, but he would ask me so many questions, I won ; t go. I lived 
next door to him, in a clergyman's family, once. I won't go to him 
now" — and her thin lips compressed — " but I am not afraid that I 
will remain here long. Most of these girls are afraid of the keepers 
of these saloons, and are afraid to go out without asking them ; but 
I'm not," she added, proudly, as her eyes snapped. " I might if I 
lived in some other countries, but I never will be in my own." 

Oh, starry flag ! emblem of liberty, source of hope, inspiration 
of the enslaved, even in the underground caverns of moral death! 

We went into two of these brothel bar-rooms that were on the 
first floor. A stout, bloated old woman was the keeper of one of 
them, and an elderlv, dark-complexioned German, cheaply dressed, 
was the proprietor of the other. The same sort of little bedrooms 
were in the back part of both of them. 

The old woman tried to vindicate the character of her establish- 
ment to the roundsman. It seems that a customer had accused her 
or her girls of stealing a diamond pin. Her righteous indignation 
was a psychological study. She, fee vender of young womens' 
vice, was wroth that she should be accused of theft. The man 
came in only, and took a drink and left, and then returned and 
charged her with theft. She, the innocent, a thief ! It was past hu- 
man, or at least feminine, endurance. 

And as she was defending her integrity three young creatures 
came in, laughing and riotously, and bare-headed. 

One of them, hardly sixteen years old, was smoking a segar. 



TIIE NEWSPAPERS. 101 

♦' "Where have you been, gals ?" asked the roundsman. 

" Down in restaurant, getting supper." 

" Treated V } asked the roundsman. 

« Yes." 

The German's hell was represented as a " quiet place" — " one of 
the quietest in this precinct," said the roundsman. 

The wretch had a polite bearing, and invited us to be seated in a 
little back box. 

But we hastened on, sickened and sorrowful, having seen quite 
sufficient of the night-side of the Five Points brothels and lodging- 
houses. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE NEWSPAPERS. 

A daily newspaper is only half awake while the sun shines, but 
when the gas is lit, and the last of the down-town merchants and 
clerks is in his up-town or Brooklyn home, then the newspaper es- 
tablishments begin to wake up. The red-eyed and sallow-looking 
printers, whom we saw lounging about the corner of Spruce and 
Nassau during the day, have all disappeared, and have become 
alert workmen in the composing room. The night editor has taken 
his seat, and the boy has brought in the evening mail. The mail 
editor turns over the exchanges with a rapid and practiced hand, 
eye and scissors. The latter seem to rush by instinct at an available 
paragraph. Occasionally he jumps up with a paragraph and puts 
it in the night editor's desk. Neither say a word ; the latter takes 
it, seos that it needs more mention than an ordinary bit of news, and 
makes an item of it in his summary, or makes a special editorial 
paragraph of the news contained. The messenger comes in from 
the Associated Press Telegraph with yellow, ill-smelling sheets of 
tissue-like paper, that contain Congressional news. It is rapidly ex- 
amined ; no compression can be done there — it is already boiled 
down for newspaper use. The fire reporter rushes in with not only 
a report of a great fire, but with a list of the losses and the amount 
of the insurance — very nearly correct. That is a good item ; the 
night editor don't cut that down. In comes another who has been 
detailed to give a report of a lecture. The night editor reads ; it is 
dull, very, and would make a column of print. His pencil goes 
mercilessly through it until it becomes a mere paragraph — as much 
as it deserves. Up comes the editor-in-chief, who asks to see the 
telegraphic news that has just gone up a little while before. Per- 
haps the compositors have had it long enough to give him proofs. 
These he looks over ; something done by the Radicals, or the Con- 
servatives, or the Democrats, according to his own politics, fires him 
with an idea ; and he proceeds to put it on paper with lightning-like 
velocity, and probably in a penmanship to which a cuneiform in- 
scription would be plain. At the head of it he writes " Brevier 
leaded — Must go in." Whatever else stays out excepting the impor- 
tant news, this editorial must be inserted. Then come in various 
reporters with paragraphs and reports of political meetings, police 



102 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

items, accidents, etc., etc., until after twelve o'clock. The dramatic 
critic has sent a boy from the green-room of a theatre with his judg- 
ment of, or remarks upon, a new play, (for a dramatic editor's talk 
is not always criticism) and he has done his share toward the au- 
thor's success or failure. Generally the critics are kind enough to 
dramatic authors, unless they happen to be one of themselves. 
Dramatic critics have less esprit du corps than any other class of 
writers or workers, and the great successes of Mr. Charles Gayler 
in his dramas, or that of Mr. Augustine J. Daly in his version of 
Leah, have received, comparatively, very little assistance from the 
Press. By and by an eager, unprofessional and fatigued-looking 
man rushes in, asks for the editor, tells him some story of a great 
disaster en steamboat or railroad which he has seen, and of which 
he nearly became a victim. The editor wastes no time, but asks 
him to write out the account or tell it. This is done ; the foreman 
above is informed that he must reserve a column or more for 

Frightful Accident on the . The copy is sent up as fast as each 

sheet is completed, and when the work is done the editor says sim- 
ply, " It is understood, Mr. , that this information is not to be 

furnished to any other office." " Certainly, sir," or " I have already 
given the Tribune the particulars." If the first answer is given, the 
stranger is requested to call next day about eleven, when he will 
receive from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, according to the sen- 
sation character of the news. In one case, the loss of the " Arctic" 
steamship, which must be fresh in the minds of all our elder readers, 
the Herald gave the first survivor of the disaster who reached the 
city of New York, and who could give a connected account of the 
wreck, a. thousand dollars. The recipient of the sum was Mr. 
George Burns, then in the employ of the European Express Com- 
pany. He was kept under lock and key while writing out his ac- 
count, and no compositor who had worked on the MSS. was allowed 
to leave the building until the paper was on press. The liberal 
price paid for the news was a trifle, compared with the profit made 
by the Herald and the prestige it gained thereby. This is the secret 
of the success of the Herald. It has never hesitated at any price, 
where important new3 was to be had by paying for it, and if any- 
body has any that has value, he will always find the Herald a ready 
and liberal purchaser. Of course, all the other papers do so in a 
measure, but they are apt to hesitate when the sum reaches any large 
amount. 

Sometimes they all brace themselves up for a straggle as to who 
shall be first. To this, occasionally, it is necessary to get hold of, 
and keep hold of, the means of telegraphic communication, for the 
rule in telegraphic offices is first come, first served ; but you may 
have secured the telegraph, and have nothing to send. You cannot 
keep possession of the liue by merely paying for it. This would be 
contrary to the provisions in the charters of the Telegraphic Com- 
panies, and against public interest. You must have something to 
send ! and as long as you are sending despatches, no matter of what 
character — for the Company has no right to criticize your message 
— you keep possession of the line. So it was once when the Prince 
of Wales was on this side of the ocean, all the great dailies had re- 
presentatives at Niagara, (the Herald had two) where he was mo- 



THE NEWSPAPERS. 103 

mentarily expected. The Herald's correspondent, while all were 
waiting for the Prince, had nothing to do, and a3 the time when he 
was to appear hadgone by, he began to fear that when he did 
get the news from his colleague, who was traveling with the Prince, 
and writing out his notes for instant despatch as soon as he reached 
the lines, he might lose the line. At the moment there was nothing 
going on in the telegraph office, so he stepped in and dictated a de- 
spatch. 

Jas. G. Bennett, Esq., Herald Offlce, N. Y. 

" Prince has not come. Is expected every minute. The wire is uaoccuniod 
What shall I do ?" * 

It wasn't long before the answer came. 

" Telegraph the Book of Genesis." J. G. Bennett, N. Y. Herald Offlce. 

The correspondent was a little puzzled ; he had no Bible, and 
while he was out getting one, a Tribune or Times man might come 
in and get the line. But he rummaged around in his pockets and 
found a page of print, which he handed into the operator with the 
proper heading, and then he sallied out for a Bible. He was soon 
back, and so kept the telegraph going until the Prince appeared, as 
also did his colleague with his report, which was then rapidly trans- 
mitted over the wires. When the reporters for the other papers 
camein, they found, much to their disgust, that the Herald was not 
only in the occupancy of the line, but likely to remain so too long 
for their reports to be of any avail for the next day. And so the 
Herald beat the other papers on that, and so it probably will on 
the next great affair, unless they become as liberat and as wide 
awake as Mr. Bennett or his alter ego, Mr. Hudson, are. 

Occasionally other telegraphic despatches come in, which are not 
now so warily scanned as they were during the war. These de- 
spatches are enclosed in the Associated Press envelope. Observing 
this, and the paper a peculiar yellow, semi-transparent kind, the 
night editor, if unsuspicious of fraud at the time, might very easily 
send up a despatch written, or manifolded, on the proper paper and 
in the proper enclosure, without reading it. This was actually done 
with the bogus President's Proclamation, during the war, which was 
published by the more unwary of the city Press, but which couldn't 
pass muster with the night editors who read all their despatches. 
It was concocted by " Howard," long known a3 a member of the 
Press in this city. In his capacity as reporter, he was considered 
by many as the leading man on it, but not, by any means, the most; 
scrupulous or conscientious. He would tell a sensation story if he 
wasn't particular about any of its other qualities. The bogus pro- 
clamation was supposed to be intended to influence the gold mar- 
ket for a rush, as there were many men, and of American birth, too, 
who were not ashamed to make a profit out of the very agony of 
the country, and who were even willing to prolong the suffering 
and intensify it, for the sake of a few dirty dollars. Not a few who 
hold their heads high now, and profess a warm patriotism, were 
buyers of gold during the years of the Rebellion. 

Toward one o'clock the last form is locked up — the outside, as it 
is called — that on which the first, fourth, fifth' and eighth page3 of 



104 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

the paper come ; the first side, with the bulk of the advertisements, 
went to press at nine o'clock, and is probably off by this time, or 
may be going on upon another press. The last side then is going 
to press. One man is left in the editorial room to take charge of 
any news that might corns in, and one or two compositors sleep in 
the composing room with the same view. Toward three, news- 
venders from up-town — men, women and boys — employe's of news 
agencies, railroad news-dealers and the carriers — begin to drop in 
for their supplies. Fast as they get them they hurry off, and by 
six o'clock, or a few minutes later, there begins the short hour when 
there is a real lull in the life of the newspaper, for at seven office 
boys appear, engineers and firemen turn up, folders and clerks 
come in, and soon all is life and activity again. 

But there is another picture. The daily newspaper and the 
weekly story paper, tht; comic monthlies and the Merryman, gratify 
an honest and decent taste, and even where they only amuse, they 
do not degrade. There are, however, papers, justly interdicted by 
the law, that thrive only on filth, and by encouraging and creating 
a taste for it. As the police are constantly on the watch for these, 
they are seldom printed in the daytime. The forms are prepared 
at some obscure quarter of the city, where a printing office would 
not be suspected, and where no sign i& put out to show that there is 
one, and are brought, after nightfall, to some third class press-room, 
whose master, unsuccessful in a reputable line, hopes to make both 
ends meet by doing dirty work at a high price. With doors care- 
fully locked and a good look-out kept, the work is done. The 
sheets are bundled up and carried off, carefully covered from all 
prying eyes, and the forms are hurried back to the office of their 
proprietor as if they were bodies of the victims of a murderous 
crime. This is the work of the obscene newspaper. 

But all is not prosperity for those concerned in this business. 
Every year or two come arrests and confiscations of contraband 
books and papers. Few of the dealers in this business become per- 
manently prosperous ; occasionally one emerges into respectable 
publishing and drops his dirty traffic. But these cases are few and 
far between. Most of the persons once engaged in this business 
just hover on the edges of society, lead an unwholesome, hunted 
kind of life, wear a furtive look, as if they constantly expected the 
visit of an officer, and seldom prosper sufficiently to compensate 
them for pnrsuing their filthy calling. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE RIVER THIEVES. 

If crime stalks rampant through the streets of New York during 
the hours of dim lamplight, so also on the rivers that bound the 
city, and on the bay below, it works steadily among the masses of 
floating things that crowd the docks and channels. There are cer- 
tain facilities connected with the business of thiering upon the wa- 
ter, that are not enjoyed by the sharks whose element is the land. 



THE RIVER THIEVES. 105 

The difficulties of detection are in favor of the dock pirate, who 
pulls audaciously about in his boat a3 if in pursuit of some legiti- 
mate calling;, and frequently succeeds in landing his cargo of stolen 
property under the very nose of the police. Certain branches of 
river thieving are carried on in the open day, but it is at night, of 
course, that the more desperate characters belonging to the craft 
carry on their depredations. These are the pirates who hover 
around vessels in the still hours, boarding them where a strict watch 
is not kept, and frequently using their weapons, to test the force of 
the principle that •' dead men tell no tales." 

For the protection of the water around the city there is a force 
called the Harbor Police, a glance at whose arrangements form a 
necessary part of this chapter. This force, at present, consists of 
twenty-six men, under the command of Captain Hartt, once himself 
a mariner, and whose name is renowned throughout the city in con- 
nection with many daring arrests of desperate criminals of the land 
gangs — for his command was formerly in the city precincts. The 
headquarters of the force are on board of a good-sized, side-wheel 
steamer which, when not on a cruise, is moored off the Battery, near 
the Staten Island ferry house. She has a couple of quarter-boats 
on dec If, and a brass gun or two — the latter more for show than 
use. There are two or three barges belonging to the department, 
and the men are of the maritime type, accustomed to working boats, 
and versed in many useful things peculiar to the craft. Captain 
Hartt is a wiry man of muscular buM, with grizzled hair and beard, 
and a certain quiet determination of character about him that must 
give him a great advantage when action becomes necessary. He 
has a strong objection to the use of fire-arms, resort to which he 
does not allow except in the most desperate cases. His principle 
is that the club, properly handled, is a sufficient weapon in the hand 
of the civil officer, and his own practice of the instrument is of a 
very peculiar and effective kind. There is a very simple handcufl 
used by these maritime police for securing desperate characters. 
It is nothing but a bit of rope about six inches long, inserted, at 
either end, into a button, somewhat like the handle of a gimlet. In 
cases of resistance, an officer can handle hi;s man very readily by 
whipping a turn of this round his wrist. Several times in the 
course of the twenty-four hours, the steamer is got under weigh, 
and run slowly up the rivers as far as Fiftieth street, or further. 
Close observations are made of everything going on, and yet, in spite 
of all this, and of the constant patrolling of the water by the force 
in their barges and small boats, many depredations are committed 
that are never brought to light ; for the force is far from adequate 
for the protection of a harbor so thronged with life and reckless 
characters as that of New York. 

The river thieves belong, for the most part, to the lowest scum of 
that peculiar class of men haunting the docks and piers of great 
seaport towns. They are just sailor enough to handle boats with 
facility, and overhaul the interior arrangements of a vessel, and 
just ruffian enough to take a human life where that becomes neces- 
sary to secure their object. Once, in a police court, we saw a river 
thief, who was a good type of his class. Ho was a powerful, un- 
dersized fellow, with some dark blood in him— South American, 



106 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

probably, by origin. His left hand was but a stump, all the fingers 
of it having been removed by a surgical operation, performed on 
him by the mate of a ship, who used a hatchet with effect just as the 
robber had laid his hand upon the gunwale to board. The fellow's 
arms were tattooed all over with obscene emblems, and his mouth 
had been extended on one side nearly to his ear, by a slash from 
some sharp weapon. 

There are sundry junk-dealers throughout the city, whose dens 
are depots for the proceeds of river thieving. The stock, in many 
of these places, consists entirely of stolen property — bales of cotton, 
coils of rope, ships' instruments, and such other articles as a wily 
depredator can manage to " convey" in the course of a midnight 
cruise. Collusion i3 a leading principle upon which river thieves 
work. The experienced pirate of the harbor has frequently a " pal" 
among the hands belonging to some vessel. This operator secretes 
such articles as he can from the cargo of a ship about to sail, and 
manages to drop them quietly to some hovering boat when all is 
dark and still. 

Among the smaller craft in the rivers, such as schooners, the river 
thieves find a wide range for their operations. On such vessels as 
these, strange though it may appear, but very slack watch is kept 
at night. If a cargo ha3 lately been disposed of, the river thieve3 
are aware of it. The chances are that the captain of the schooner 
has the money in his cabin — for these coasting mariners are as care- 
less of their pelf as are their brothers, who heave the deep sea lead. 
The chances are that he has had his spree ashore, and that he come3 
on board drunk, at a late hour of the night. Once the captain is 
asleep, there is but little chance of the watch keeping awake. Then 
is the opportunity of the river thief. Silently, in the dark, he pulls, 
with a couple of his " pals," to the schooner, which is anchored, 
probably, in some quiet creek of the river. Having divested him- 
self of his boots, he creeps, cat-like, to the deck, where he lies 
awhile behind some convenient pile of ropes or sails, until he ascer- 
tains that all is quiet. Then he proceeds to lay hands on such " ma- 
rine stores" as may happen to be lying around loose, which he 
drops over the side to his accomplices. But his object is to get at 
the captain's money, and to do this requires the skill of a practiced 
burglar. If there happen to be obstacles, such as locked doors, he 
removes them sofily with a < ; jimmy," or short iron bar. He hears 
the snoring of the c.iptam, in whose cabin there is a dim light burn- 
ing, and, entering into the narrow chamber, he proceeds to search 
the trunk or locker in which he thinks it likely the money may be 
stowed away. Should any untoward noise, such as the falling of 
the lid of a trunk, awaken the sleeper, that unfortunate person's 
doom is sealed, for the river thief hits him a powerful blow on the 
temple with the " jimmy," or with a sand-club, and there is a va- 
cancy in the number of the mess of that schooner. Then a quick 
retreat must be made, but the thief usually manages first to find the 
money, which, as often as otherwise, is in the captain's trousers 
pocket, stowed away under the now blood-stained pillow. Some- 
times the mate or one of the hands awakes in the nick of time, but 
arms are seldom at hand, and the pistol of the robber is always 
ready to aid his retreat. In a late case of murder on board a vessel 



TIIE RIVER THIEVES. 101 

lying in the East "River, ttie captain of a schooner testified that, a3 
he lay awake in his stateroom one night, about the time of that 
murder, his door was opened by a strange man, who ran away u^on 
seeing him awake, and succeeded in making his escape by sliding 
down a chain into a boat manned by a couple of his " pals," who 
pulled away with him into the dark. This schooner-master deposed 
to having had $1,900 in his trunk at the time, and $200 in his trou- 
rers pocket. There were two muskets on board, he said, but they 
were not loaded. Sometimes the river thief does not come ofF so 
well, instances having occurred in which he has been shot dead, or 
badly maimed, while boarding some vessel. There is many a tra- 
gedy enacted on the river that never comes under the notice of the 
police. The mate of a vessel that traded to a South American port 
relates how, as his ship lay at anchor in the stream one night, ready 
to sail at the morning's dawn, he, alone on the deck, and unarmed, 
found himself confronted by a powerful ruffian, who had just slid 
over the bulwarks on to the deck. The intruder aimed a blow at 
him with a heavy iron hammer, but missed him, and they were in- 
stantly in gripe and rolling upon the deck. The noise awoke some 
of the crew, one of whom struck the robber a powerful blow on 
the head with a belaying-pin. The fight was over then, for the rob- 
ber was dead ; but there was a musket loaded with buckshot at 
hand, and this the mate discharged at a boat that just then pulled 
away from the stern of the ship, with what effect was never known 
by him. It was about time for the ship to sail, and too late, there- 
fore to notify the police of the circumstance, so they made short 
work of it by heaving the body of the dead river thief overboard. 
Many a body thus disposed of drifts up about Bay Ridge or Coney 
Island, and all that a coroner's jury can do is to leave the mystery a 
mystery still. 

We do not Know that highway robberies on the river are of com- 
mon occurrence, but we are aware of one, at least, which did not 
come under the notice of the police. Certain inmates of a fashion- 
able boarding-house in the upper quarter of the city had made an 
afternoon of it by hiring a row-boat, in which they pulled over to 
the great lagerbier brewery at Guttenburg, on the Jersey side of 
the North River. There were festivities going on in the saloon in 
the upper story of the building, and the party, most of whom were 
ladies, remained till a late hour, enjoying themselves in the " giddy 
waltz." It was a still summer night as the boat, freighted with its 
fair cargo, and pulled by a couple of elegant young gentlemen in 
fancy shirts, put off from the wharf at Guttenburg. All went well 
for awhile. The ladies were very merry, and sang chorusses, and 
the gentlemen made the night fragrant with their segars. A3 they 
neared the middle of the river a boat, very silently pulled, as if 
with muffled oars, shot so close athwart the bow of' the pleasure 
boat as to elicit epithets from some of the gentlemen on board the 
latter. In the pause that ensued for a moment, the strange boat 
suddenly veered round and came alongside the other. It was 
manned by three fearful-looking roughs, one of whom remained at 
the oars, while the other two, presenting revolvers at the heads of 
the oarsmen in the pleasure boat, ordered them to lay to, at the 
same time demanding an immediate surrender of all valuables on 



108 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

the persons of the party. What could an unarmed party do against 
three river pirates armed to the teeth, and evidently ready to take 
life upon the first show of resistance ? Three gold watches were 
handed over by the ladies, together with a number of rings and 
other small articles of jewelry. One of the gentlemen, who had a 
watch and chain valued at two hundred and fifty dollars, dropped 
it quietly overboard, under some vague impression that it might 
subsequently be recovered by dragging the river for it ! The plun- 
der taken from the party amounted, in all, to at least the value of 
six hundred dollars, and the river thieves pulled swiftly and silently 
away, until they were lost in the gloom of the night. There were 
private reasons why this affair was never reported to the police. 
Scandal whispered that one of the ladies of the party was somewhat 
" bemused" with champagne, and that the party in general pre- 
ferred putting up with their losses to risking the revelations that 
would certainly have been made in a police court. 

The grounds near Hoboken, known as the " Elysian Fields," are 
not unfrequently selected as a landing-place by river thieves who 
have " made a haul." It is a lonely place at night, and the cover 
affordea by the trees is favorable to the removal of small plunder. 
The writer of this .chapter remembers the circumstance of a tele- 
scope and ship's compass being found upon the beach, not far from 
Castle Point, both of which articles had marks of blood upon them. 
A wounded man had evidently been carried through the wood 
there, from the traces left, but, on arriving at the road, the clue wa3 
lost, and the mystery has never been solved. It was a river thief 
affair, no doubt — a robbery and a row, and a ruffian shot by some 
captain or mate, and then a night scene in those " Elysian Fields" 
that must have been awful in its contrast with the sentiment belong- 
ing to that mythological name. 

A foggy night on the water is a favorable time for the operations 
of the river thieves. These fellows are so well acquainted with all 
the nooks and docks and landing-places along the rivers, that they 
can find them, so to speak, by groping for them in the dark. Many 
of them have labored, at one time or another, at the occupation of 
towing, and this they find of great service to them in their noctur- 
nal forays. There are points along the Hudson River Railroad 
where booty has often been stowed away until an opportunity ar- 
rived for its safe removal. The neighborhood of Stryker's Bay, for 
instance, with its broken, bush-covered ravines and sedgy ponds, 
offers many facilities to the river thief for the concealment of his 
booty. In the sea-wall of the railroad, property of various kinds 
has frequently been found by the early fisherman, as he paddled his 
hoat along under its lee. In a fog, it is easy for the thieves to es- 
cape the notice of the river police, whose limited number renders 
the force a very inadequate one for the thorough protection of float- 
ing property. Three or four of these river thieves can pull, unob- 
served, in their boat, along the sea-wall referred to, on a thick night, 
until they arrive at some lonely point, where a landing is easily ef- 
fected. In these cases they generally have confederates waiting for 
them at a spot previously agreed upon. The surveillance of the 
land police in this district is very inefficient, and good? thus landed 
by the thieve3 can be readily transferred to a market cart, and 



THE RIVER THIEVES. 109 

driven quietly into town by the Bloomingdale Road, and so to the 
den of the omnivorous junk-dealer. 

Along the East River, the numerous marshy inlets, such as New- 
town Creek and Flushing Greek, are frequently resorted to, in emer- 
gencies, by river thieves, who can make a cache for their plunder in 
some nook of the marsh, until they find a sale opportunity for its 
removal. A sportsman, who was watching one night for wild ducks, 
by the faint moonlight, in one of these bays, was approached by a 
boat containing two men, who did not at first perceive him, con- 
cealed, as he was, by the tall sedges. He watched them quietly, as 
they went to work close to him, and perceived that they were about 
stowing away some articles in a musk-rat house, than which there 
could have been no better cache for their purpose, had they not 
been watched. Unluckily, some movement made by the gunner, in 
his skiff, attracted their attention, and at once a couple of revolvers 
were " trained" upon him, at a distance of not more than twenty 
paces. His double-barreled gun, however, brought matters nearly 
to a level, and the river thieves, having quickly sacked their plun- 
der, pulled away in their boat, with muttered imprecations. On ex- 
amining the spot where they were about to conceal their booty, the 
duck-hunter discovered that they had left after them a knife of large 
and dangerous proportions, which he has retained as a relic to the 
present day. 

Doubtless more murders are perpetrated by the river thieves than 
ever are brought to light. Nothing can be easier than for despera- 
does, provided with boats, to land in the night at some point favor- 
able for a highway robbery, and, having beaten and plundered some 
marked victim, to dispose of him by taking him out upon the river 
and dropping him in mid-stream. There is a lonely spot of road 
by the Sunswick, near Astoria, where an outrage of this kind once 
took place. Late at night a tradesman, having a considerable sum 
of money about him, crossed over from the city by the Greenpoint 
Ferry, and wended his way on foot for his home, somewhere in the 
neighborhood of Astoria. He had nearly reached the Sunswick 
bridge — a very lonely spot at night — when he was prostrated by a 
blow from behind, and fell bleeding and unconscious to the ground. 
When he recovered his senses, he found himself in a boat with two 
men, who were pulling out into the stream. One of them, he was 
certain, was a man who had crossed over with him on the Green- 
point boat. He at once conjectured that they were about to throw 
him overboard, and, being a powerful swimmer, thought that his 
best chance of escape would be to lie still, and simulate an appear- 
ance of unconsciousness. They had not got far out into the stream 
when they lay on their oars for a moment, and, after a whispered 
consultation and some close scrutiny of their victim, heaved him si- 
lently over into the rushing water. He arose not far from the boat, 
but, luckily for him, the night was dark, else a bullet from a revol- 
ver might have closed the transaction. By swimming and floating 
with the current, he managed to scramble ashore somewhere near 
Hunter's Point, where he lay for some time on the beach in a state 
of utter exhaustion. His money, of course, was gone, and, fortu- 
nately for him, the thieves had also removed a new, heavy overcoat 
worn by him, together with his boots — encumbrances with which, 



110 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

it is hardly probable, that he could have succeeded in gaining the 
shore. This little episode in river piracy will show how diversified 
are the operations of the dangerous class under notice, and how- 
much easier it is for a murder to be perpetrated on the rivers than 
for the crime to be traced to its source. 

Coasting by Jones' Wood, and so down by Hell Gate to the Har- 
lem River, it will be obvious to the keen observer that here the 
river thieves must have many a haunt. It was from some of these, 
probably, that the murderers issued on that cold night in December, 
when the mate of a vessel, at anchor off Riker's Island, was foully 
slaughtered in cold blood. During the course of the inquest upon 
that crime, the stuff of which the river thief is composed came 
prominently to the record. One of the witnesses had been em- 
ployed much in towing upon the rivers. He had also been em- 
ployed in hoisting cargoes, and in other occupations alongshore. 
Once he had been up on suspicion of burglary, and sundry times 
for theft and crimes of varied character. He had been educated in 
the school for river thieves ; in fact, to properly supervise the pupils 
of which academy, would require a force very much more numer- 
ous and more fully equipped than that of the present harbor po- 
lice. 

There is one outlet for the river thief through which he often es- 
capes the consequences of a crime. He is frequently, as has been 
stated, a seaman of more or less experience ; he has his accomplices 
among the crews in the harbor, and when advised of pursuit, he fre- 
quently evades it by hiring himself out as a hand on board some 
ship about to sail for a foreign port. The river thief of New York 
has had his experiences varied, occasionally, by little operations in 
the waters of the Mersey, at Liverpool. His hands have been im- 
brued in blood amid the pig-tailed population who crowd the port 
of Hong Kong. He learns from slimy Lascars many a lesson in the 
use of the knife, teaching them in return, no doubt, things in the 
way of dark work that they were not up to before. His end is gen- 
erally a violent one, of course, but he is much offcener killed in the 
act of perpetrating some crime, than brought to justice in a more 
legitimate way. 

The low boarding-houses in Mackerel ville, Cherry street and 
Water street, are the principal shore haunts of the river thieves on 
the east side. There are many such slums near the North River, 
where they have their dens. In that scattered village of shanties 
running from river to river on the south latitude of Central Park, 
many of these fellows also find their shelter, and from this it is dif- 
ficult to rout them. There is a junk trade carried on among these 
shanty people, who are mostly desperadoes of the worst class. At 
night the river thief, when not upon his <•' lay," takes his amusement 
in the low dance-houses and groggeries with which the port slums 
are crowded. Many of the characters introduced in the chapter 
descriptive of the dance-houses belong to the river thief class. 
With the keepers of such " cribs" the river thieves are on business 
terms, for the former are very generally " fences," or receivers of 
stolen goods, to whom the harbor pirate consigns his ill-gotten 
plunder. The dance-house keeper himself, has frequently followed 
business as a river thief, and is usually quite ready to recur to that 



AN ARION BALL." HI 

occupation should his shore transactions grow dull. Detectives 
will point out to you, in these reeking places, fellows who are 
known to he river thieves, many of whom are probably murderers 
besides. They have not. in general, a seamanlike air about thorn, 
but are, for the most part, the very type of the worst kind of hu- 
manity that haunts great seaport towns, and that i3 saying a good 
deal. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

AN ARION BALL. 

In the days of old, there was a celebrated harper in the Island of 
Lesbos, and his name was Arion. His fame reached the court of 
Periander, at Corinth, to which that magnate persuaded him to emi- 
grate with his harp. Well, he lived there for some time, Arion did, 
until he learned, from some newspaper of the day, probably, that 
there was a good opening for a young man in his line in Italy, and 
to Italy he went, accordingly, on speculation. He drew uncommon- 
ly good houses in that land of lute and song, and soon became so 
rich, in fact, that he bethought him of returning to Corinth, there to 
dwell in ease and luxury, and to astonish the mind of the great Pe- 
riander with his display of the greenbacks of the period. With 
this view he chartered a vessel, manned by Corinthian mariners, and 
when the wind and tide were all right, up anchor was the word, and 
away they sailed from the port of Tarentum. But the tars of Co- 
rinth turned oat to be a scaly lot. They coveted the greenbacks of 
Arion, and, to come at them, they concocted a plot to throw that 
hapless minstrel into the sea. Arion offered to compromise matters 
by forking over all his greenbacks to them if they would only let 
him be, but the Corinthian scoundrels laughed at the idea of his 
giving them that which they were in a position to take, and they in- 
sisted that he should commit suicide either by hari kari in his state- 
room, or by plunging into the briny deep. Seeing how things lay, 
Arion made one last request, which was that he might be permitted 
to execute a fantasia u;»on his favorite instrument, previous to com- 
mitting himself to the locker of the immortal David Jones. This 
was granted, for the Corinthian mariners were men of taste, who 
liked to commit their murders to the strains of soft music. Putting 
on his richest clothes, then, Arion advanced to the poop, where, 
striking an attitude and a chord upon his harp, he sent the wild mel- 
ody of his death-song vibrating over the surface of the blue waters. 
Attracted by the strain, dolphins came playing about the ship ; and 
now, the melody played out, Arion threw himself, harp in hand, into 
the sea, where one of the dolphins, observing that he could not 
swim, took him upon its back, wagged its scaly tail, and steered 
straight with him for Tcenarum, where he landed, From this he 
walked to Corinth, not having the means of riding in the omnibus. 
He was very wet when he got fnere, and yet, in spite of this cir- 
cumstance, Periander declined to believe his narrative about the 
dolphin, calling it a " fish story," and he actually put Arion in a 
house of detention for witnesses, pending the arrival of the Corin- 



112 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

thian ship. When that event came round, Periander asked the cap- 
tain and crew what news from Italy, and especially about Arion. 
He was assured by them that the harper was in excellent health and 
spirits at the date of their sailing, and that his concerts continued 
to be numerously attended by the fashionable people of Tarcntum. 
They were a good deal sold, however, when Arion was introduced 
to them, habited in his fancy costume, and with his harp-case under 
his arm. To cut matters short, they all pleaded guilty of the at- 
tempt to murder, and were gibbetted accordingly, by order of Peri- 
ander. 

The foregoing brief account of Arion is necessary to the full un- 
derstanding of the scope and aim of the Arion Society. It is an 
association of German residents of New York, instituted so long 
ago as 1854, and was called by the name of Arion, as being a so- 
ciety of a musical and dressy character. The Arion is a nourishing 
institution. From a small seedling, it has blossomed out into a 
great and gorgeous century flower, and one of the events of each 
succeeding February, of late, has been the Arion Masquerade Ball. 

This curious frolic is usually held at the Academy of Music, that 
being the place best adapted for the great throng of revellers at- 
tending it, as well as for the varied performances got up for the oc- 
casion. In February, 1865, there were said to be seven thousand 
people present at the Arion Ball, three thousand of whom were in 
masquerade costume, and the sale of tickets amounted to $10,000. 
How much the custom has taken hold may be inferred from the fact 
that tickets to the amount of $22,500 were taken up when the occa- 
sion came round in February of the present year. 

If the weather happens to be fine, the scene outside the Academy 
of Music, on an Arion Ball night, is a very lively one. Thousands 
of outsiders crowd thither to enjoy glimpses of the wonderful and 
awful personages that are driven up in carriages and shot out upon 
the steps of the theatre. These are hailed with shouts of laughter, 
and with critical remarks more sharp than flattering, as they enter 
the massive portals. There is a strong force of police present — an 
arrangement very necessary to keep the depredating class in order. 
Pickpockets make a harvest here, of course, and quite as bad as the 
other pickpockets are the vociferous speculators in tickets, who try 
to force their " paper" on the unwary. These fellows will some- 
times get as much as fifsy dollars for a ticket, early in the evening. 
The ticket may be a genuine one, or it may not. In the latter case, 
the purchaser of it is undeceived at once by the astute door-keepers 
Wrathful he returns to inflict summary vengeance upon the swindler 
by whom he has been victimized, but that person, it is needless to 
say, has vamosed for districts unknown. We have heard of but one 
instance in which stern justice overtook one of these ticket opera- 
tors on the spot. He was arrested on the verge of the crowd by the 
person on whom he had just played his game — a large and muscu- 
lar gentleman from Vermont — who first punched his head against a 
lamp-post, and then deposited him in an ash-barrel, heels upper- 
most. 

As the Arion Ball is essentially a carnival /est, its arrangements 
are all of an extremely grotesque character. The Germans have 
their own ideas on the subject of the grotesque, the greatest allow- 



AN ARION BALL. 113 

al>le breadth being necessary to their idea of fun. The artists who 
decorate the surroundings for an Arion Ball must, one would 'Sup- 
pose, have been put through a previous course of strong German 
liquors, so as to bring them to the pitch of delirium tremens proper 
for their task. The " banner with a strange device" startles quiet 
people at every turn. There may be humor in these hideous con- 
ceptions, but if so, it is of a kind appreciable only by the massive 
Teutonic mind. Equally exaggerated in conceit are the other deco- 
rations. From the pillars that support the boxes bird-cages are sus- 
pended. Are these the toy-like fabrics in which our ladies so de- 
light, and do they imprison little loves of canaries, or linnets, or 
finches that whistle waltzes with piccolo effect ? Not by any means. 
The cages are nothing but " skeleton skirts" of large dimensions, 
with floors affixed to them, and the sweet song-bird that occupies 
each is a barn-door chanticleer in full plumage — a real fowl-and- 
blood representative of the " early village cock." Comic statues 
grin here and there from their pedestals, suggesting the idea that 
the shipping in the port had been invited to the feast, and had sent 
up their figure-heads to represent them on the occasion. Germany 
is typified by a colossal picture of a princely personage, who holds 
in his red right hand a huge goblet of foaming lager bier, while, to 
represent America, there is a wonderful work of high art hung op- 
posite to this — a picture of the everlasting and irrepressible " dar- 
key" — cause to our country of so much merriment and so much 
woe. Upon the stage many " infernal machines" are conspicuous, 
exciting the wonder of the strange guest as to what horrible rites 
are to be performed in the course of the evening. The word 
"Arion," blazing in a thousand brilliant gas-jets, dazzles the eyes of 
the spectator who has not provided himself with a bit of smoked 
glass. Curious effects of colored fire are displayed from time to 
time. In the proscenium boxes there is a goodly company of stuffed 
figures, the leading one of which represents Prince Carnival, patron 
of the quaint sports of the season. There are great bouquets af- 
fixed to many salient points of pillar and cornice. The markets 
have been ransacked to procure materials for these — cabbages, car- 
rots, beets and onions — all suggesting the wherewithal for a tank of 
vegetable soup when the feast is done. Year after year these deco- 
rations and accessories are varied in design, and year after year they 
seem to become more ridiculous and more grotesque. 

Among the queer trades that flourish, more or less, in a great city 
like New York, that of the " nose maker" is one by which the coun- 
try cousin has, ere now, been much troubled and perplexed. The 
solution of that mystery is to be found at aa Arion Ball. Hardly 
any person is rash enough to display his natural and inherited pro- 
boscis at an Arion Ball. With carnival time the time of the nose 
maker has come, and he makes the most of it, and of his noses, 
while the game is on. Usually the nose of the reveller at an Arion 
Ball is preposterous as to its dimensions and color, and it frequent- 
ly has a pair of goggles affixed to it, and an impossible moustache. 
The artist in noses must needs be a man of great inventive power, 
and having a keen eye for color. Nature can be of no use to him 
for his studies, but opium may, because it is only to the influence of 



114 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

some such drug that one can trace the hideous nasal appendages to 
be seen at an Arion Ball. 

By nine o'clock the floor and tiers of the Academy are generally 
full, and then the wild revelry of the carnival sets in. The floor- 
committee is a very important element of the arrangements here. 
It is composed of Teutonic gentlemen, selected for their stature and 
fine personal appearance. Sometimes they are habited in the cos- 
tume of knights of the middle ages, and their deportment is impos-' 
ing in the extreme. In the course of the evening there is a grand 
carnival procession, in which Prince Carnival is borne on a throne, 
in the midst of a crowd of representatives of ancient and modern 
celebrities to the music of several brass bands. Here are to be 
seen Mars and Bellona, in appropriate proximity to the leading gen- 
erals who figured in the late war. Gold brokers and bounty bro- 
kers are in the procession, too, with the appropriate emblems of 
their extremely crafty crafts. There are soldiers and sailors, and an 
indescribably ridiculous character carrying a keg of lager bier. 
The Presiient of the United States is borne along upon a platform, 
where he superintends the work of a number of tailors engaged in 
the delicate task of " reconstructing" certain States. Rabid-looking 
Irishmen figure also in the throng. They are of the newly-caught 
kind, revelling in all the glory of their native caubeens and cordu- 
roys, and they represent the Fenian interests with wonderful fidelity 
and adherence to facts. Their " Sunburst'' is ready to cast its long 
shadow over their native mountains, and their proud spirits are not 
going to be crushed beneath the iron-shod heel of their natural 
enemy. They will have no bonds except those of the Fenian trea- 
sury. There are Queens of Flowers in the procession — pretty la- 
dies dressed to represent the flowers after which they arc named for 
the night. There are several glee clubs, whose province is, per- 
haps, to contribute to the general glee. There is a comic band — 
nay, tragic — which appropriately hails from tho Jersey Flats, and 
this may account for the flatness by which it3 music is character- 
ized. Large exotics are borne along in the procession, adding 
much to its general effect. 

And now, while the revel is at its highest, and the heterogeneous 
elements of which it is composed are moving to and fro in a bewil- 
dering maz3, a sort of panic seizes upon the assemblage. There is 
a panic in the music. The dancers seem frozen to the floor, and all 
eyes are turned toward the upper tier of boxes, in which a row ha3 
taken place among the masqueraders who are loitering there. It 
seems to be a very serious business, and some of tho lady maskers 
are preparing themselves for a graceful and effective swoon. Ere 
the police can interpose, a terrible transaction take3 place. The 
wranglers in the gallery have seized upon a man, and are trying to 
throw him over. He is poised for a moment upon the front of the 
boxes, and appears to be in a collapsed state. Ha ! he totters ; a 
wretch strikes him a powerful blow from behind, and O, horror ! he 
come3 falling from the dizzy height, his head striking heavily against 
the edge of the second tier, whence he rebounds with force, and 
falls to the floor, just as he has reached which he is neatly caught 
up by a cord affixed to his pantaloons, so that he arrives among 
the horrified spectators in a perpendicular state. He looks ex- 



AN ARION BALL. 115 

hausted, of course, and very limp— which latter may he accounted 
for by the fact that he is made up of a fancy dress, stuffed. But a 
pretty German milliner, in the dress of a contadma, has really 
fainted, and there is a crowd of sympathizing Teutons around her, 
all intent upon supplying her with lager bier. 

The excitement caused by this " delicate stratagem" has hardly 
subsided, when a number of grosses-tttes make their appearance on 
the floor. They are got up with enormous " property" heads fur- 
nished with movable glass eyes, which wink, and leer, and glower, 
after a very ludicrous fashion. These characters, fifty in number, 
make tremendous havoc in the crowd, as they move around the 
floor singing an unearthly chorus. Alter this, the attention of the 
spectators is directed to a rope stretched from one proscenium box 
to another at the opposite side of the house. An immense German 
Falstaff makes his appearance in the proscenium box at one end of 
the rope, and apologizes for the non-appearance of a celebrated 
rope-walker, whom illness has prevented from entertaining the 
guests to-night, Falstaff states, however, that he, himself, has re- 
solved to supply the place of the famous walker of the tight-rope. 
At this, a buzz of incredulity pervades the throng, but Falstaff says, 
"You shall see," or some words to that effect, in German, and re- 
tires for a moment, to have his feet chalked, probably, for the at- 
tempt. Presently Falstaff makes his appearance upon the rope, 
along which he staggers in a way that would be ludicrous, were it 
not shocking, for the spectators expect every moment to see him 
precipitated to the floor. But no 5 he safely gains the further box, 
though not until after several hair-breadth escapes. The crowd 
breathe more freely, and so doe3 Falstaff, perhaps, but he has not 
finished his performance yet. Once more he plants his foot upon 
the rope, along which he again totters, and staggers, and bungles, 
until he has reached the point from which he started. Then he 
turns and bows to the crowd, some of whom know exactly what he 
is made of, and who made him, and how there were two Falstaffs in 
the field that night — one who made the little speech, and the other 
who bungled through the Blondin feat with the help of ropes, like 
any other puppet. 

Quadrilles performed by characters taken from zoology, are a fea- 
ture of the Arion Ball. Eight personages, made up to represent gi- 
gantic frogs, come hopping into the middle of the circle, where they 
perform a dance that really may come under the designation of a 
"hop." A matter-of-fact person present, not a German, inquires 
with simplicity whether those are the hops that are put into lager 
bier. For a reply to this he is referred to a Knight of Malta, who 
stalks majestically around the circle. The frogs are very success- 
ful, and, the quadrille over, they go hopping away, amid a murmur 
of applause, to have their lager bier. 

Here an immense dernqohn, labelled " Kirschcnwasser," whirls by 
in a waltz with a lady whose dress is made up entirely of newspa- 
pers — editorial articles converted into articles of costume.^ A Pe- 
ruvian cacique goes by, solemnly, with a large cage on his back, 
filled with tropical birds of gay plumage ; and, byway of a pendant 
to him, here comes a jolly market woman, carrying on her shoulders 
a basket filled with an assorted cargo of vegetables and fruit. 



116 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

Presently there is another kind of greenback quadrille, which ri- 
vals even that of the performing frogs. Sixteen Arions make their 
appearance on the floor, in a costume intended to represent the 
present currency of the country, from the one dollar denomination 
upwards. They go through the figures of the dance as creditably 
as mere paper money could be expected to do. Money is always 
popular, and these bipedal greenbacks come in for their share of 
applause. 

In the course of the night a balloon ascent is announced. At one 
Arion Ball, the balloon of the occasion was stuffed with Confede- 
rate notes. It was let Up from the floor about midnight, and, as it 
neared the dome, it burst amid a brilliant display of fireworks, and 
all the poor paper went circulating wildly through the upper 
spaces. 

Back of the stage there is a structure of some kind, on the roof of 
which various rare performances take place, by means of automa- 
tons. The latter are worked by ropes and cords attached to the 
gallery, and the scenery against which they are relieved is of that 
kind so dear to the massive German mind, representing clouds with 
angels seated on them, each of said angels being a portrait of some 
well-known member of the Arion -Society. Tiie Turners are very 
conspicuous in the course of the evening's entertainments. Physi- 
cal culture is a great point with the Germans, and many and great 
are the acrobatic accomplishments of the Turnverein. Here, at an 
Arion Ball, they figure to great advantage. They throw summer- 
saults with an agility that amateurs but seldom display. They 
string themselves together like German sausages, and pile them- 
selves up, one over another, like prJzels on a plate. Their muscles 
work like steel springs under an elastic tissue, and ladies' eyes are 
beaming on their manly forms through many a velvet mask. Who 
wouldn't like to be a member of the Turnverein, to turn hand- 
springs when nothing else is to be turned to advantage, and scale 
the battlements of Cupid by making one of a pyramid of acrobats 
thirty feet high ! 

And now, when the athletic sports of the night begin to flag a lit- 
tle, and the dance is again in full swing, there comes a whirl of 
reckless characters into the thick of the tumult, making a track, 
after the manner of a western tornado, through the living forest of 
maskers. This is the association called the " Wicked Club." Its 
members are bound by an oath to do all the mischief they can on 
this particular occasion, short of taking life or property, or maiming 
the human form divine. Dressed in sundry absurd costumes, these 
pestilent personages weave themselves in and out everywhere 
through the crowd. They pull off those noses that afford them a 
convenient grasp, and where that artificial member represents a 
snub, they flatten it closer to the face of the wearer than the artist 
in noses ever intended it to go. Pierrots have their sugar-loaf hats 
bonnetted down over their green goggles. The Chinese mandarin, 
with the queue, finds himself suddenly deprived of that appendage, 
with which a member of the Wicked Club is walloping a burnt-cork 
African with an energy worthy of an overseer from Tennessee. 
Feathers are snatched from the scalp-locks of majestic Indian 
Chiefs, and stuck jauntily into the waterfalls of the Empress of the 



A SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE OLD BOWERY. 117 

French and the Queen of Night A quiet domino has stripes put 
upon his face by lingers that have stolen the paint from the face of 
a warrior of the Comanches. A severe puritan is " translated" by- 
having one of the big heads, already referred to, crowded down 
over his own, which more than one person present saiya is a l - very 
good way to serve the severe puritan ; what business had he there?' 7 
Here is a monk, with a clown's hat driven down so tightly over his 
shaven crown as to baffle all his efforts to get it off. Diogenes, with 
Ms lantern, is eagerly scanning the members of the Wicked Club, to 
see whether he can find an honest man among them, but his hope- 
less task is cut short by a couple of members of that association, 
who wrap him from head to foot in the blanket of an Indian war- 
rior, extinguishing him and his lantern alike. A grave Turk has 
had one of the hideous caricatures smashed down upon his head, 
which appears through it like that of a stage Hassan emerging from 
a trap. All this time the brass instruments are in full blast, blurt- 
ing forth polkas, and redowas, and waltzes, and gallops, with an en- 
ergy characteristic, exceedingly, of the horns of a German brass 
baud. At last the Wicked Club, having expended some of its wick- 
edness and most of its wind, vanishes away to the unknown region 
whence it came, and nobody seems in the least to regret its depar- 
ture. The dance is resumed, fresh maskers come dropping in until 
long after the midnight hour, and it is not far from morning's dawn 
when the revel is over, and the last of the revellers are retiring 
from the halls of the grotesque. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

A SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE OLD BOWERY. 

It's a close, murky Saturday night in December. There's a driz- 
zly rain dropping from the leaden heavens. Its drops are very fine 
— almost imperceptible. Yet you are not mistaken about its rain- 
ing, for your over-coat is damp and heavy. Your segar is moist 
aud draws hard, and the flags are slippery with a damp, greasy 
slime. The car-drivers, in the street before you, are sure it means 
rain, for their heads and shoulders are seen — above the steam of 
their jaded horses— enveloped in the big capes of those everlasting 
blue coats so dear to the heart of every practical horse-car driver 
the city over. 

Why I have spoken of the rain is that I have been, for a mortal 
hour, puffing a vile segar— (a denizen of this quarter)— before the 
dingy granite pillars, which, like some mythical quartette of stone 
giants, guard the entrance of this notorious play house— The " Old 
Drury" of New York. 

I came to my post very early, my dear reader, not to get a front 
seat as you may infer, but to mark from the first the gradual gather- 
ing of that squalid band of urchins who never fail on benefit nights 
to besiege the causeway leading to the pit of this old castle of fun 
and fierce actim*. 



118 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

Since I first strolled out of that beer garden next door where I 
had been weak enough to invest in this vile segar, I have seen a 
whole row of apple-stands and pea-nut stalls spring into light on 
the sidewalk, and there is now a gallery of withered old, toothless 
faces, very ghastly in the lurid light of their torches hovering over 
their store of pippins and nuts. 

Then I have seen, too, those canvas transparencies, flapping over 
head, grow luminous, as if by magic, and the smell of gas about 
me is very strong. 

Speaking of those weird paintings up there, I don't think Mr. 
Barnuin, in the palmiest days of the Old Museum, dreamed of such 
a display in the Free Art Line. When the magic lantern man puts 
in the slide of " Noah coming out of the Ark" before removing the 
" Daniel in the Lion's Den'' the white sheet before the audience is 
very much like the impression I got of those artistic daubs. There 
hangs " Fox-ey" with a red nose, green eyelids and yellow hands ; 
and there hangs Fannie Herring in blue stockings and purple shoes 
— shoving up a yellow hill an orange colored ash-cart with the as- 
sistance of a couple of sky-blue terriers with pink eyes. But with 
the fog and drizzle, the bad lights and the glaring lights, these 
painted marvels have that mixed appearance of thai magic lantern 
catastrophe. 

I had not loitered long after fie gas blazed up when from up the 
street, and from down the street, and from across the street there 
came little squads of dirty, ragged urchins — the true gamin of New 
York. These at once made a gymnasium of the stone steps — stood on 
their heads upon the pavements or climbed, like locusts, the neighbor- 
ing lamp-posts; itching for mischief ; poking fun furiously ; they were 
the merriest gang of young dare devils I have seen in a long day. 
It was not long before they were recruited by a fresh lot of young 
" sardines" from some where else — then they went in for more 
monkey-shines until the door should be unbarred. They seemed to 
know each other very well, as if they were some young club of ge- 
nial spirits that had been organized outside of the barriers of society 
for a long while. What funny habiliment? they sported. It had never 
been my experience to see old clothes thrown upon young limbs so 
grotesquely. The coat that would have been a fit for a corpulent 
youth nearly buried a skinny form — the height of your cane. 

And on the other hand, " young dropsey's" legs and arms were 
like links of dryed " bolonas" in the garments which misfortune's 
raffle had drawn for him. Hats without rims — hats of far, dread- 
fully plucked — with free ventilation for the scalp — caps with big 
tips like little porches of leather — caps without tips, or, if a tip still 
clung to it, it was by a single thread and dangled on the wearers 
cheek like the husk of a banana. The majority seemed to have a 
weakness for the costumes of the army and the navy. Where a do- 
mestic tailor had clipped the skirts of a long blue military coat he 
had spared the two buttons of the waist-band, and they rested on the 
bare heels like a set of veritable spurs. Shoes and boots, (and remem- 
ber it's a December night,) are rather scarce — and those by which 
these Savoyards could have sworn by grinned fearfully with sets 
of naked toes. One ** young sport," he had seen scarcely ten such 
winters, rejoiced in a pair of odd-mated rubber over-shoes, about 



A SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE OLD BOWERY. 119 

the dimensions of snow-shoe3. They saluted him as " Gams." A 
youngster, with a childish face and clear blue eyes, now shuffled 
upon the scene. 

" Lordy, here's Horace, jist see his git up." A shout of laugh 
ter went up and Horace was swallowed in the ragged mob. 

" Horace" sported a big army cap like a huge blue cxtkif uisher. 
He wrapped his wiry form in a cut-down, loag-napped white^be.ivcr 
coat, the lappels of which were a foot square, and shingled his ankle3 
as if he stood between a couple of placards. F had seen the 
latest caricature on the philosopher of the Tribune, but this second 
edition of H. G. swamped it. I knew that that young rogue had 
counted upon the effect of his white coat, and he enjoyed his 
christening with a gleeful face and a sparkle in his blue eyes. 0, 
for the pencil of a Beard or a Bellew, to portray those saucy pug- 
noses, those dirty and begrimed faces ! Faces with bars of blacking, 
like the shadows of small gridirons — faces with wceful bruised 
peepers— faces with fun-flashing eyes — faces of striplings, yet so old 
and haggard — faces full of evil and deceit. 

Every mother's son of them had hi3 fists anchored in his breeches 
pockets, and swaggered about, nudging each other's ribs with their 
sharp little elbow3. They were not many minutes together before 
a battle took place. Some one had tripped " Gams," and one of 
his old shoes flew into the air. I think he of the white coat was the 
rascal, but being dubbed a philosopher, he did his best to look very 
wise, but a slap on the side of the ridge of his white collar upset his 
dignity, and " Horace" " went in,' ; and his boney fists rattled away 
on the close-shaven pate of " Gums." 

The doors are now unbarred, and this ragged " pent up little 
Utica" rends itself, but not without much more scratching and much 
swearing. 0, the cold-blooded oaths that rang from those young 
lips ! As the passage to the pit is by a sort of cellar door, I lost 
sight of the young scamps as the last one pitched down its gloomy 
passage. 

In the human stream — in a whirlpool of fellow-beings — nudging 
their way to the boxes and the upper tiers, I now found myself. It 
was a terrible struggle — females screaming, were eddied around and 
around until their very faces were in a wire cage of their own 
" skeletons." 

"Look out for pickpockets," shouted a Metropolitan. Every 
body then tried to button his coat over his breast, and every 
body gave it up as a bad job. In at last, but with the heat of that 
exertion — the smell of the hot gas — the fetid breath of two thous- 
and souls, not particular, many, as to the quality of their gin— what 
a sweltering bath follows ! The usher see3 a ticket clutched before 
him, and a breathless individual saying wildly, " where !" He points 
to a distant part of the house, and the way to it is through a sea of 
humanity. A sort of a Dead Sea, for one can walk on it easier than 
he can dive through it. I shall never know how I got there at last ; 
all I remember now are the low curses, the angry growls and a road 
over corns and bunions. 

The prompter's bell tingles and then tingles again. The bearded 
Germans of the orchestra hush their music and the big field of green 
baize shoots to the cob-web arch. 



120 NIGHT SIDE OF NEW YORK. 

Now is the time to scau the scene — that teeming house — that instant 
when all faces are turned eagerly to the foot-lights, waiting breath- 
lessly the first sound of the actor's voice. The restlessness of that 
tossing sea of humanity is at a dead calm now. Every nook and 
cranny is occupied — none too young — none too old to be there at 
the rise of the curtain. The suckling infant " mewing and sucking 
in its mother's arms." The youngster rubbing his sleepy eyes. 
The timid Miss, half frightened with the great mob and longing for 
the fairy world to be created. Elder boys and elder sisters. 
Mothers, fathers, and the wrinkled old grand-sire. Many of these 
men sit in their shirt-sleeves, sweating in the humid atmosphere. 
Women are giving suck to fat infants. Blue-shirted sailors encircle 
their black-eyed Susans, with brawny arms (they make no " bones'* 
of showing their honest love in this democratic temple of Thespis). 
DiTision street milliners, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and flashy dressed 
sit close to their jealous-eyed lovers. Little Jew boys, with glossy 
ringlets and beady black eyes, with teeth and noses like their fat 
mammas and avaricious-looking papas, are yawning every where. 
Then there is a great crowd of roughs, prentice boys and pale, 
German tailors — the latter with their legs uncrossed for a relaxation. 
Emaciated German and Italian barbers, you know them from their 
dirty linen, their clean shaven cheeks and their locks redolent 
with bear's grease. 

Through this mass, wandering from pit to gallery, go the red- 
shirted pea-nut venders, and almost every jaw in the vast concern is 
crushing nut shells. You fancy you hear it in the lulls of play like 
a low unbroken growl. 

In the boxes sit some very handsome females — rather loudly dress- 
ed, to be sure — but beauty will beam and flash from any setting. 

Lean over the balcony and behold in the depths below the 
famous pit, now crowded by that gang of little outlaws we parted 
with a short time ago. 

Of old times — of a bygone age — is this institution. In no other 
theatre in the whole town is that choice spot yielded to the un- 
washed. But this is the " Bowery," and those squally little specta- 
tors so busy scratching their close-mown polls, so vigorously pum- 
melling each other, so unmercifully rattaned by despotic ushers- - 
they are its best patrons. 

And are they not, in their light, great critics, too ? Don't they know 
when to laugh, when to blubber, and when to applaud ! and don't 
they know when to hiss, though ! What a fiat is their withering 
hiss ! What poor actor dare brave it ? It has gone deep, deep 
into many a poor player's heart and crushed him forever. 

The royal road to a news boy's heart is to rant in style. 

Versatile Eddy and vigorous Boniface are the lads, in our day, 
for the news-boy's stamps. 

Ranting is out of* the female line, but Bowery actresses have 
a substitute for it. 

At the proper moment they draw themselves up in a rigid statue, 
they flash their big eyes, they dash about wildly their dishevelled 
hair, with out-stretched arms and protruding chins they then shriek 
out V-i-1-l-a-i-n ! 

0, Fannie Herring ! what a tumult you have stirred up in the 



A SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE OLD BOWERY. 121 

roused pit 1 No help for it, my dear lady. See, there's " Horace," 
standing on his seat and swinging his big blue cap in a cloud of 
other caps — encore ! encore ! And the pretty actress bows to the 
pit and there is more joy in her heart from the yells of those skinny 
little throats than from all the flowers that ladies and gents from 
above may pelt her with. 

The bill of fare for an evening's entertainment at the Old Bowery 
is as long as your cane, and the last piece takes us far into the 
night — yet the big house sits it out, and the little ones sleep it out 
and the tired actor well earns his pay. 

I'll not criticise the acting — a great part of the community thinks 
it's beyond the pale of criticism — this peculiarity of tearing things 
to pieces, and tossing around " supes" promiscuously. 

And another thing, those little ungodly imps down there have a 
great appreciation of virtue and pathos. They dash the r dirty 
fists into their peepers at the childish treble of a little Eva — and 
they cheer, O so lustily ! when Chastity sets her heavy foot upon the 
villain's heart and points her sharp sword at his rascal throat. They 
are very fickle in their bestowal of approbation, and their little 
fires die out or swell into a hot volcano according to the vehemence 
of the actor. " Wake me up when Kirby dies," said a veteran little 
denizen of the pit to his companions, and he laid down on the bench 
to snooze. 

"Mind yer eye, Porgie, said his companion, before Porgie had 
got a dozen winks. " I think ther's somthen goen to bust now." 
Porgie's friend had a keen scent for sensation. 

As I came out at the end of the performances I again saw 
'* Horace." He had just rescued a a butt" from a watery grave in 
the gutter. " Jeminy ! don't chaps about town smoke 'em awful short 
now'days !" was the observation of the young philosopher. 

The theatre is almost the only amusement that the ragged news- 
boy has, apart from those of the senses. The Newsboys' Lodging 
House, which has been the agent of so much good among this neg- 
lected class of our population, find the late hours of the theatre a 
serious obstacle to their usefulness. It is safe to say that if the 
managers of the two Bowery Theatres would close at an earlier 
hour, say eleven o'clock, they would prosper as greatly as at 
present, and the boys who patronize their establishments would be 
much better off in body and mind. An effort is about to be made 
to obtain this reform from the managers voluntarily — instead of 
seeking legislative aid. TVe are quite sure it will be for the interest 
of all to close the theatres early. 



THE END, 



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J. C. HANEY & CO., Publishers. 

Office of Morryman's Monthly and the Comic Monthly, 

No. 109 Nassau street, New York. 



H 107 89 



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